


TMNT: Osaka Shadows

by Azure_Umbra



Category: Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Cartoon 2018), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types
Genre: AU/re-imagining, Alternate Universe, Japan, Japanese Culture, Osaka (City), will add more characters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:33:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 54,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26279482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Azure_Umbra/pseuds/Azure_Umbra
Summary: What if instead of America, our heroes in a half-shell grew up in Japan? Here, in place of New York City, they experience their childhood and adventures in the city of Osaka. (This story is specifically tailored to the 2018 Rise!series)I'll try to keep true to as many of the original show's narrative elements, but expect different twists on those same elements and storylines. I may also try to make something unique along the way. Any comments and constructive criticisms are welcome.
Comments: 72
Kudos: 42





	1. Dōtonbori Takoyaki

**Author's Note:**

> So, I already know that our friendly neighborhood turtles are a New York-thing. But one day, I had an idea as to what if the whole TMNT adventure happened in Japan instead, so this fic is born. You can take this as an AU or a re-imagining, if you like. Just opting for a more 'traditional' environment, you know?
> 
> For now, I'm intending this to be a series of one-shots which focus on particular instances in life for the cast. I will add actual adventures and fights (like the episodes) that are par the norm for the show, but I'll need preparation.
> 
> Also with this change, I've changed the main characters' names to fit in with the new setting, so here are their new Japanese-versions:  
> Raphael = Hamato Hiroshige (濱戸 広重) / Raph = Hiro  
> Donatello = Hamato Basho (濱戸 芭蕉) / Donnie = Basho (name stays the same)  
> Leonardo = Hamato Hokusai (濱戸 北斎) / Leo = Hoku  
> Michelangelo = Hamato Monzaemon (濱戸 門左衛門) / Mikey = Mon  
> April O'Neil = Ōnishi Uzuki (大西 卯月)
> 
> Enjoy!

The night was young in the spirited **Dōtonbori** area of Osaka city, the multicolored neon and LED lights of billboards, open-door restaurants and shops, street lamps, and even a few miniature stalls here and there. The throngs of people strolled leisurely but jauntily as though it were the prelude to another weekend of cutting loose, forgetting the worries of the week’s daily grind for now. The overall mood of energetic relaxation and relaxed fervor was already represented by the **Glico Running Man** who graced the canal’s biggest billboard with his open-armed running leap.

Everyone of the general public weren’t the only ones who were in the chipper mood. Up on the rooftop just above Glico Running Man, a group of four shadows slinked over the edge, peering down to observe the populated canal. They seemed to move across the rooftops like a mass of liquid made of darkness. At least, until the largest of the four with a glint of red spoke first.

“How’s the scene down there?” he whispered.

“The next boat’s rocking down the stream in T-minus 12 seconds,” a synthetic voice crackled over a handheld communicator.

The large figure put down the hand the held the device. He turned his head left and right to address the others on either side of him. “Okay team,” he whispered, “like we planned.”

“You mean, like ‘you’ planned,” a smaller and slimmer shadow with a patch of blue next to him corrected with a snicker. Hearing that made the larger shadow narrow his eyes and raise an eye ridge in deflated annoyance.

“On three,” the large shadow ignored, refocusing his attention on the canal down below that was still surrounded by people. Though before he started counting, he took a glance to another one of the smaller shadows with him, one who was prominently adorned with a good amount of purple. “Hey Basho, is the path clear?”

The purple one named **Basho** responded promptly, albeit while tinkering on a gadget attached to his arm without looking his asker in the eye, “Well, if my repeated calculated simulations maintained their integrity…” his attention was briefly interrupted by his other three compatriots giving him a look of frustrated boredom, making him sigh back at them with a similar attitude, “…I mean, ‘haven’t failed me’, the coming boat will ensure our undercover operation’s success at 98%.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna have to give my 2%’s on that one, but shouldn’t you, like, have all the numbers here?” the blue shadow interjected again.

The purple one could only roll his eyes. “Less-than-perfect probabilities have a higher chance of success compared to the nigh-impossible-to-achieve perfect probabilities, Hoku. If it’s over a C-grade, it may as well be outstanding.”

“Guys! Guys!” the red one tried to break up the impending quarrel with a slight wave of the hand. “Focus!” His attention was then caught by the fourth shadow, one that had an orange tint to the blackness.

“The boat’s here, guys!” he pointed downwards at the waters of the canal. A metallic yellow-painted boat drifted under a bridge, with people packed on its deck looking in all directions. While there appeared to be friendly greetings between the passengers and the bystanders on the concrete, the small group concluded that it was time to move now.

“The boat has docked! I repeat, the boat has docked!” the voice over the communicator crackled again.

The red one nodded his head. “You heard her, guys! It’s go-time!”

The four figures instantly did a running leap to the side of the building that held Glico Man, and seizing a vertically attached water pipe, slid down until they touched down on the concrete of an obscured alleyway. After that, they needed another few seconds to get where they had to go before the boat passed under **Ebisu Bridge**.

The four poked their heads near the edge of the shadows blanketing the alley, their eyes scanning for an opening. It might have been odd to be trying for a way through since there were so many people walking around with their lines of sight at every known angle. It didn’t deter the red shadow, who was apparently the leader, who motioned with his head to his other three compatriots to take a stealth leap behind a wire-framed stall that was chockfull of stuffed plushies. They even proceeded to take a flying leap to hide behind the octopus display propped overhead the reserved outdoor dining area of a restaurant that stood right under Glico Man.

Each of the four shadows poked their heads from between the octopus’s tentacles. Keeping their heads low enough to avoid being seen, they slowly scanned left and right until they spotted one individual human weaving her way through the passing civilians. Their eyes narrowed as they located who they were looking for the whole time. “There she is, guys,” the red one whispered again.

The girl stopped right in front of the dining patio, just a few inches from the rope railing that separated said deck from the sidewalk. Looking left and right, she opened the cubelike briefcase she was carrying and drew out a handheld megaphone. Before she spoke into it, she took a side glance at the four hiding behind the octopus and gave a cheeky wink.

She announced herself with a strong voice through the megaphone, prompting many passersby to stop and turn their heads, restaurant customers behind her included. “Ladies and gentlemen, both everyone on land and you fellas on the water, and don't forget our honorable Glico-han above!” Normally, the public wouldn't be receptive to someone just randomly yelling in the street for the sake of attention, especially restaurant customers who were trying to dine in peace, but fortunately for the girl, she worked at that restaurant. “We got a special performance lined up just for all of you folks to celebrate our restaurant’s anniversary tonight, and what could be better than dinner and a show?”

The effect was instantaneous. The crowds present on either side of the canal were clapping and voicing their fascination if not excitement. Even some on the boat were cheering and calling for the show to get started.

The girl smiled confidently and nodded her head, hoping the four hiding behind her would see that signal too. “Then I, your friendly hostess **Uzuki Ōnishi** , will sound the call. To everyone serving and dining in Kuidaoraku…” she turned around to give a wide-open showman's pose in front of the octopus prop, “Happy anniversary!”

The people immediately gasped with wide open eyes as they were beheld by the sight of four guys leaping out from behind the octopus, seizing the few seconds of being in midair to strike a dynamic pose. When they landed, it was a sight to behold: standing before the public were four humanoid turtles, each one radically different in a whole lot of ways. The first was bulky, had a snaggletooth hanging from his snout, wore a red bandana-like mask over his head, and had a spikey shell. The second was shorter, having a pronounced head with a purple mask and red-blue-lensed googles overtop, thin-limbed, and a metallic purple casing over his own shell. The third was a little bit shorter than the purple one, having a blue mask that covered only his eyes, similarly thin-limbed, a hexagonally patterned shell, and a few stripes of red and yellow on his skin. The last one was the shortest of all, wearing an orange mask over his eyes, having a few tattoos on his skin, guard caps on his elbows and knees, and a yellow pattern resembling circles on his shell. 

All four of them took a moment to maintain their poses after landing on the dining deck, then smiled and waved at the people gawking from all around. “Aw yeah!” the red one soaked in the adoration, “That's right! We're the turtles here to spice up the night, everyone! Who's up for a party dance?”

The crowd gave off a resounding yes. However, the littlest turtle in orange leaned towards the red one, seeming a little nervous. “Uh, Hiro?” he whispered, “I don't think a dance was exactly part of the plan, if I heard right.”

The red turtle **Hiro** gave a reassuring smile. “Don't sweat it, Mon. As long as we act like actors, no one would think we're not human. Besides, feels great to make everyone feel great around us, right?”

Little **Mon** briefly looked hesitant, but then his own smile returned. “Okay then, if you say so, leader!”

Immediately, the for turtles broke out into a breakdance on the pavement between the restaurant's deck and the canal. Each one of them busted a move in every angle they could come up with. It was impressive enough that whoever was driving the tour boat on the canal was also watching, the boat not even drifting under the nearby Ebisu Bridge once. Hiro the red turtle had an arm over his head and another placing a hand on his own shell. Basho the purple turtle appeared to do some kind of traditional island dance with a modern twist on it, weaving his limbs around a spinning staff he appeared to always go everywhere with. **Hoku** the blue turtle settled for giving multiple types of dabs at once. Mon the orange turtle was in full breakdance form and fashion, doing twists and spins on the pavement while bouncing on his hands and feet, finishing with a spin on his shell.

The crowd cheered even louder, feeling as though there were no limits as to how well these four bizarre performers could impress them. Standing on the other side of the rope fencing atop the restaurant patio, the girl who identified herself as Uzuki Ōnishi had a confident smile. It had taken a few days to work out the little details, but while the first part was easy, it was making sure the general public was okay with what the guys planned to do that she gave it her all. Everything was going perfectly…

“ _Ōnishi-han!_ ”

Uzuki’s body froze up. She slowly turned to face a confused and flabbergasted man in a cooking uniform standing a meter or so next to her, his arms held slightly apart to further represent his shock. “What’s all this?” he asked her warily, pointing with his hand to the four turtles making a scene.

Uzuki scrambled her brain for a quick fix. She didn’t think her plan would include that sudden element. “Well, they’re a bunch of performers here to help promote our restaurant, boss,” she answered with hands raised in earnestness and a tooth-bared smile stretched a little too big. “We are celebrating the anniversary after all.” She really hoped that answer alone would get him off her back, or even better, see her in a more favorable light of the paycheck or position kind.

At the same time, the festive energy was only climbing higher. “Man! This really is so much fun!” Mon panted as he was in the process of showing a new move. He took a brief glimpse at the other three doing the same.

“I think I just about levelled up!” Hoku chimed in, even sneaking a nose-to-nose moment with a random human lady, who flinched but was otherwise amused.

“It goes to show that we embody the island spirit,” Basho added with his usual tone of extravagance, accompanying his words with his own ultra-modern moveset designed for photo ops.

“That’s right, guys! Keep it up!” Hiro exclaimed excitedly, alternating between trendy movements and dynamic displays, “We’re almost there!” Everyone kept going, even intensifying with himself especially so…at least until he unknowingly got a little too close to a pole holding up part of the rope fence…

Simultaneously, it didn’t seem like Uzuki’s explanation was working the way she hoped. “You hired a bunch of performers without talking to me first?” the apparent restaurant manager asked her, sounding quite concerned.

“Ah, no! No, of course not!” Uzuki tried to correct him as fast as she could. “Well, they are professionals, BUT they’re friends of mine. They’re doing this for us as a…special favor. Yeah, special favor!” She intensified her innocent smile for good measure. “Besides, I did tell you about them…I just didn’t tell you exactly how I planned the performance to go…because it’s a…surprise.” She finished it off with a raising of her hands and forearms.

Her feign of innocence was cut short by a crash right behind her.

“Aw, really Hiro? We were getting so good!” Hoku complained, with the other two behind him also having cut their performances short to stare at the largest turtle sprawled on his shell on the restaurant patio, the rope railing now entangled on some knocked over tables.

“So sorry guys,” Hiro grunted, trying to lift himself off the ground, “I must’ve stepped on something!”

Basho took a moment to glance over to where Hiro stood last, finding a semi-crushed soda can lying there. “Okay, should we have been checking for litter before this whole thing?” he said out loud, pointing to the can rather disappointedly. All the other people surrounding the four boys were turning and remarking to each other about the inconvenience of a discarded can.

Mon thought it was a good time to step in before the mood was dampened further. “Well, accidents happen, dancing or littering, right? Still a good show, if you ask me.”

Hoku, on the other hand, wasn’t quite on board with what Mon said at the moment. “Uh, guys?” he called to the other two in even-volume, pointing with his thumb to where Hiro landed when he fell. “Maybe we should be more worried about THAT mess over here.”

Hiro, while busy with getting himself upright though he was also helped by a couple strangers, was also trying his earnest to apologize for several things: breaking some restaurant stuff which has already gotten Uzuki and her manager on edge, disrupting the customers’ mealtime, and causing an uncomfortable mess for both. Uzuki was already in the middle of her own apologizing to the manager. “ _Honma gomen_ , it was an accident,” he grunted, getting into a little impromptu kneeling position once he finally righted himself, his hands clasped together while propped upright on his elbows. “I’ll help clean it right up!”

The manager sighed, making Uzuki look at him nervously, but after straightening his glasses, opted to just talk to him straightforwardly, “No, no, there’s no need. I got staff who can take care of it,” giving a brief side-eye to Uzuki who kept her hands behind her back. “I know you probably meant well by this gesture, but let me give you something for your trouble.” He reached into his pockets to pull out his wallet, drawing out a few paper yen bills before handing them over to Hiro. Hiro blinked, unsure of what to make of the gesture, but warily grabbed the bundle of yens anyway. The manager then looked at the other three boys. “You know, if you want, I can grab you a sample of our anniversary-special takoyaki for you to take home too.”

Hiro, Basho, Hoku, and Mon jumped a little, instantly looking ecstatic while giving out a series of ‘yeah’s’ in rapid fire succession. Uzuki felt a little good seeing that, feeling that despite the fowl-up, the effort wasn’t completely in vain.

“Alright!” Basho said, his usual confident soaking out of his voice. “Now this feels totally worth it! Beats having to wonder if we should be taking Capital City cleaning tips!”

Hiro, Hoku, Mon, and Uzuki froze, their eyes widened and their bodies too rigid to notice that the people standing around them just gasped at what they heard. “ _Akan akan akanakanakan! Omonnai!!!_ ” the four screamed in their heads, desperately hoping their Takoyaki offer wasn’t compromised.

The manager paused. “On second thought, why not use your yen reward on a _Makudo_?” He then turned his attention to Uzuki, who seemed a little pensive. He pointed at her apron, which Uzuki reluctantly took off and handed back to him. He then swiveled around to go back into the restaurant, presumably to continue his work without another thought. Everyone else turned their attention away from the turtles, apparently resuming their own business before the whole spectacle.

Hiro, Hoku, and Mon turned to look at Basho with a disappointed expression. Basho didn’t seem to shaken up by that though. “What?”

“ _Nandeyanen_ , Basho!?” Uzuki seemed incredulous with her hands on her hips, though she wasn’t violently furious about it. “ _Nanishitennen!?_ ”

Basho knew he had to keep himself from digging deeper. “S-sorry, Uzuki! I was just making a comment on the litter that tripped Hiro! Nothing malicious!”

“Sure bro,” Hoku sounded rather deadpan, zipping over to the purply-dressed turtle to rest an elbow on his shoulder, “and you probably already knew how comparing the home team to bigshot-ville in the east is a rather big turnoff.”

“Guys! Guys!” Hiro interjected again, “it might’ve been over the line, but it was also my fault too. We probably would’ve scored the takoyaki if I hadn’t tripped.”

“It’s okay Hiro,” Mon patted the bigger turtle on the arm, “accidents over your feet happen, but ones that attack the hearts and souls of living citizens are not.” He made sure to direct that last bit to Basho, who rolled his eyes as he made it clear that he got the message.

“Well then,” Uzuki said in order to get back on a normal track, “speaking of takoyaki, you guys don’t mind if I added a bit of okonomiyaki and kitsune-udon to the list, do you?”

“Huh?” the four guys swiveled their heads to the girl with wide eyes.

“But didn’t you just turn in your apron?” Mon pointed out.

“Yeah I did, but that just means I’ve been demoted to customer now,” Uzuki shrugged, no longer seeming that soured. “So why don’t you guys wait here while I order takeout?”

The guys took a moment to blink twice, briefly unsure of what to make of this change of plan, particularly since this change suddenly came after their original plan evidently went wrong. After all, the plan was to simply perform in order to distract everyone long enough for Uzuki to grab the box of takoyaki she was saving from the restaurant’s staff room.

“Sure, sure! That sounds great!” Mon nodded his head in her direction. “Looks like it worked out after all.”

Uzuki shook her head with a smile of jovial disbelief. “ _Metcha-aho_ as always, Mon.” With that, she turned to go to the restaurant’s main entrance. After a little while, the turtles were left alone.

“Well, I’m not complaining,” Basho spoke first, “even when we lost, we still won.”

“See?” Hiro, pleased by his younger brother’s optimism, slid over to Basho and pointed to him with both fingers on both hands clearly for Hoku and Mon to see. “Basho gets it. So we didn’t lose it all. Plus, we get our first real taste of seeing what Osaka thinks of us.”

Mon smiled along with Hiro as he agreed with his big brother’s optimism, though Hoku couldn’t help but add one more footnote. “Maybe next time, we’ll just tell them we’re turtles pretending to be humans in costumes. They’ll go wild.”

Hiro flinched from what he heard Hoku say as he escorted two of his brothers right next to the restaurant patio. _“Yeesh, and I thought Basho had an attitude.”_

But he didn’t remain dampened for long as he observed how relaxed all the humans surrounding him were. Even with the ruined show, it didn’t really hurt. The boat on the canal resumed its trip down the waters that lined the city and Glico Man above remained glamorous as ever.

It felt nice to live with Osakans, and even better that he and his brothers were too. There was no better place to come out of the shadows than here, the city they all called home.

“Ain’t that right, Glico-han?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a fun fact:  
> The turtles' new names are based off the names of artists from Japan's Edo Period. This was as close to Italian Renaissance artists as I could find in a Japanese counterpart. Here's who they are:
> 
> Utagawa Hiroshige (歌川 広重) – He was considered to be the last great master of the Ukiyo-e art, specialized in woodblock prints and Nikuhitsu-ga painting  
> Matsuo Bashō (松尾 芭蕉) – The most famous poet of the Edo period, recognized as the greatest master of haiku  
> Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾 北斎) – An artist, Ukiyo-e painter, and printmaker of the Edo period, creator of the iconic woodblock print "The Great Wave off Kanagawa"  
> Chikamatsu Monzaemon (近松 門左衛門) – He was widely regarded as the greatest Japanese dramatist, specialized in Jōruri – the progenitor to bunraku and kabuki
> 
> I also added in a new element of having the characters speak in Japanese, specifically the Osaka dialect (Jap: Osaka-ben), to add to the setting. For your pleasure, I'll write down the spoken phrases with what they mean and how they differ from Standard Japanese (or Tokyo-Japanese):
> 
> "-han" (はん): Mr., Ms., Mrs.; honorific/title; Standard Jap. "-san" (さん)  
> "Honma gomen" (ほんまごめん): I'm really sorry; Standard Jap. "Hontou gomen" (ほんとう ごめん)  
> "Akan" (あかん): Don't/No, Wrong, No good; Standard Jap. "Dame" (だめ)  
> "Omonnai" (おもんない): Not funny; Standard Jap. "Omoshirokunai" (面白くない)  
> "Makudo" (マクド): McDonald's; Standard Jap. "Makku" (マック)  
> "Nandeyanen" (何でやねん): What is it? ("What the heck?" when said fiercely); Standard Jap. "Nandesuka" (何ですか)  
> "Nani shitennen" (何してんねん): What are you doing?; Standard Jap. "Nani shiteruno" (何してるの)  
> "Metcha" (めっちゃ): Very; Standard Jap. "Totemo" (とても)  
> "Aho" (阿呆): Silly person, Dumb person (casually said/used in jest, not taken seriously); Standard Jap. "Baka" (バカ)
> 
> Other facts:  
> Dōtonbori (道頓堀) is a popular nightlife and entertainment area in Osaka's Chuo ward. It's named after the canal of the same name that runs through that area and is considered the heart of the city.  
> Glico Running Man, or just Glico Man, is a mascot for the candy company Ezaki Glico, his billboard first installed in 1935. He's pretty much one of Osaka's most recognizable icons.  
> Ebisu Bridge (戎橋) runs across Dōtonbori Canal and directly faces the Glico Running Man.  
> Takoyaki (たこ焼き or 蛸焼) is a ball-shaped food that's made of pieces of octopus, tempura, pickled ginger, and green onion bundled together and covered in fried batter.  
> Okonomiyaki (お好み焼き) is a Japanese-styled pancake.  
> Kitsune Udon (きつねうどん) is a dish, or bowl, that's comprised of thick udon noodles in dashi-based soup with one big piece of fried tofu on top.
> 
> "Kuidaoraku" is a name I made up for the restaurant mentioned in this particular one-shot; said restaurant is also made up by me. It's a combination of "Kuidaore" (食い倒れ), a term that means 'eat yourself into bankruptcy', and "Kani Dōraku" (かに道楽), a Japanese seafood restaurant known for its crab animatronic decorating the sign over its main entrance.
> 
> What did you think of this first one-shot of my new idea? Constructive criticisms, along with any questions about this 'verse, are welcome.


	2. A Fun Fugu Trip

It was just another night in Osaka’s **Nishiyodogawa** ward. Not unlike anywhere else in Japan, a lot of the city's residents were occupied with serving one another at whatever jobs they had at the time. At least that was true for the humans of Osaka, but it didn't apply to anyone who wasn’t of the same ilk. So at least at the current hour, the waters of a river flowing underneath a metallic cross-framed bridge supported by round metal and concrete pillars remained undisturbed by the streetlamps of Osaka’s urban outskirts.

“Guys, I got another one!”

A splash could be heard as Mon erupted from the waters of **Samondo River**. He sounded rather ecstatic about what he found below the surface – in his hand, a sagging wet pufferfish wriggled around on his palm. On the edge of one of the concrete levees lining the river above, Uzuki kept track of the younger turtle’s progress on her phone. “And that’s #7,” she recorded with taps on her phone screen.

Next to her, Basho was hovering above the water on his multi-turbine jetpack strapped to his shell. “A stunning new record for this part of the _Mizu no Miyako_ ,” he boastfully remarked, “To think _fugu_ were only children of the sea and never of the rivers.”

“ _Mizu no Miyako_?” Mon questioned from under a mesh of sea grass, “But isn't it _Tenka no Daidokoro_?”

“It's the waters this city was built on that led to there even being a _daidokoro_ business, little brother,” Basho replied as he confidently tracked another pufferfish.

Meanwhile, Hiro just burst out of the water with two pufferfish clenched in his hands. “Hey Uzuki, I got a #8 and 9 over here!”

“’Ey, nice catch there!” Hoku called from a shallower part of the river, “but wait till you see how much I got under my belt!” Everyone looked in his direction to find that the red-eared slider had just snagged two more pufferfish, a total of four pressed tight against his plastron under his belt. Hoku propped his knuckles on his hips while his chest was puffed out, a toothy grin and dreamy eyes gracing his facial features.

Hiro blinked. “Aw man,” he hung his arms lower, his shell hunched up a little, “how are you the kingfisher?”

“Because ‘I'm’ the king,” Hoku put on thumb on his chest while simultaneously readjusting a wriggling pufferfish that tried to slide out from under his belt with his other hand.

Feeling proud of himself, Hoku didn't notice that another stray pufferfish was flying through the air in his direction until it hit him smack dab in the face with a splat, the fish sticking to him for a second before slowly sliding down and leaving a slimy trail. Hoku’s eye twitched. “What was that for?” he yelled at Basho, the source of the thrown fish.

“Just a gift to you, my king,” Basho enunciated from up above on his hovering jetpack, catching a side glimpse of Uzuki narrowing her eyes and pushing her bottom lip forward in an expression that said 'Come on’.

“Well thanks for this gift, noble one,” Hoku shot right back between gritted teeth bared in a vicious smile, seizing one of the pufferfish under his belt, “Allow me to reward you!” Without hesitation, he launched the pufferfish into the air right at Basho, but the purple turtle only swerved to the side to avoid the shot. Hoku took out another one and there that as well, but it got intercepted by his big brother Hiro who leapt out of the water and caught the pufferfish like a dodgeball in a dive save.

“Guys, don’t let the fish fly!” Hiro called to both his purple and blue younger brothers before he landed back in the river on his plastron with a deep booming splash. He pulled his head back out of the water to spot Hoku getting ready to throw another pufferfish. “No!” he protested, lifting a hand towards Hoku out of the vain hope he could stop him with just the sound of his voice alone. But it wasn't enough. Hoku launched his third pufferfish at Basho.

The thrown pufferfish rolled through the air until it reached its highest arc point and made a slow descent towards the targeted purple turtle, but it was suddenly enveloped in a flash of blue light in front of the five kids present.

“Huh?” they all said simultaneously, at a loss as to what this sudden phenomenon that happened before their very eyes was. The only answer they got was in the form of that same flash of light popping up next to Hiro and vanishing in that same instant, prompting the large red-masked snapping turtle to recoil in fright.

“Gah!” Hiro gasped as he looked at his own belt that was now devoid of the pufferfish he caught earlier. “My catch! It's gone!”

Mon tried to be helpful in calming his big brother’s nerves. “Don't freak out, Hiro! Maybe someone was taking pictures when the fish fell back in the water, right?” He waited for an answer, not only looking at Hiro but also checking for a response from Hoku, Basho, and Uzuki. When Mon took a look at the latter two, he scanned their hands for their phones, or at least some semblance of a mobile device. Uzuki had her phone in her pocket while Basho had his arms crossed over each other, not a trace of a phone on him in sight. Now Mon was nervous. “Okay! I think the _fugu_ are flashing away!”

Basho seemed incredulous upon hearing what his little brother said. “That can't be,” he gasped quietly, “Have the _fugu_ evolved to defy our age-old traditional techniques?” His question was swiftly answered by the same flash of light appearing on him and leaving him with two less pufferfish. “No!” he cried out in shock. “The madness is spreading!”

“Don't freak out, Basho!” Uzuki interrupted him before he could break down into a blubbering nerdy mess. “Pull yourself together!” She made sure to check left and right for the possibility of this thing happening again. “Something’s snatching our catch in the blink of an eye…” She took a moment to think, then took out her phone and held it horizontally, her camera on video-recording. “Well, never fear. Detective Ōnishi is on the case.”

Her words did briefly get Basho and the others to stop panicking, though Hoku was quick to break the silence. “Uh, 'Detective'? Now you're a detective? I thought you were just 'Party Captain Ōnishi' while in public.”

By that point, Uzuki had finished adjusting all the camera settings on her phone. “Well, if there's a party I'm needed to be there for, then I'm Party Captain. Other than that, it's a new job as the plot demands.” She turned her attention to Hiro below. “Hey Hiro, fork over your last _fugu_ to me, will’ya?”

Hiro want sure what it was Uzuki had in mind, but as a longtime friend, he had no reason not to trust her…even when most of her schemes seemed harebrained a lot of times, she took longer to expend her latent hyperactive energy, loved the crazy a little too much…the point was, he tossed his last pufferfish up to her without another word.

Right after she caught the pufferfish in both her hands, Uzuki then got right to holding it in one hand while outstretched, with the other hand holding her phone to face it, already recording. “Alright then. Now, our mystery fish thief, come and get it.” She waited, concentrating on capturing the culprit at the right moment. She waited…

“Hold on, guys.” She waited…

“It’s coming.” She waited…

“I can feel it.” She waited…

“Any time now.” She sweated.

Basho seized the moment to drift on his jetpack over to Uzuki. “Uh, you mind if I give it a try?” he suggested to her, holding out his hand in the direction of the soggy pufferfish.

The sound of that question was enough to make Uzuki yank the fish away in the furthest direction away from the gadgeteer. “ _Akan_!” she protested, hugging the fish like a lifeline. “This is my plan and I will see it through! My way!”

“ _Shimouta_! My _fugu_!” Mon cried as he found himself startled by the same flash of light again. Uzuki and Basho were now looking at the sight of a shocked Mon scrambling to find one of his acquired pufferfish now having disappeared.

“That’s settled then,” Basho said, yanking the fish out of Uzuki’s hands, “I’ll be using that fish.” He didn’t get far with it though, as he was immediately accosted by a frantic Uzuki jumping up and grabbing onto him just as he started taking off, causing him to swerve in really extreme angles. “Hey! Get off me! You’re wrecking my flight pattern!”

“You come on!” Uzuki objected back. “You’re always taking control of everyone’s plans before they even start! Can’t you give me a chance?”

“Well, if your plans could at least prove they’re doing something, then maybe I’d think they’re workable. This one didn’t, so it’s up to me to fix it up!”

“Well, you like fixing things up before they even break!”

Before their argument could spin further in the air out of control, a brief flash of light erupted between them. Both of them redirected their widened eyes to it, noticing some faint shadow within the light seizing the pufferfish and simultaneously fading away. There wasn’t enough time to grab at it before it disappeared completely…

“ _Otto_!” Hiro’s voice blared right next to the two, making them see that the snapping turtle had just dove right for the thing. Just as his hands came together to ensnare the thing creating the light, it faded away, leaving him to clasp at nothing. The pufferfish that Uzuki and Basho fought over was now gone.

For a second, everyone assumed that Uzuki’s plan was a complete bust, with even Uzuki thinking so as well…at least until she spotted the flash returning right behind her from the corner of her eye. Without thinking, she threw herself in a 180 and dove right for the source of the flash, even bouncing off of Basho’s flying form like a trampoline. Focusing on how the flash brightened and then dissipated in the same instant, she kept a mental note that this new flash had to reveal the perpetrator due to it already having taken the last pufferfish. Without another moment to waste, she pushed her hands forward and closed in on the flashing thing.

The first thing she felt on her hands was warm soft hair and equally tender and squishy flesh underneath that wriggled against her palms. She initially had her eyes shut tight the whole time despite landing back down on top of the nearby levee on both feet, but she opened one of them to have a look at what she caught. Behind her, the guys also climbed out as quick as they could to get a look as well.

In her hands was a creature which looked like some kind of miniature dog or cat. It was mainly yellow, but had a patch of blue running down its head and back as well, along with the tip of its tail. There was also a tuft of red fur on its chest along with a streak of red on the center of its head, plus a red nose. All the varying colors on its fur were separated with pointed curvy edges resembling flame patterns. The creature turned its head to stare Uzuki in the face, its eyes of magenta pupils and orange coloration outlining the lids piercing into her own with a fierce intent coupled by a teeth-bared snarl, complete with two curved and elongated upper fangs jutting from its jaws.

Everyone stared, blinking a couple times, unsure of what to make of this sudden bizarre new sight. The guys knew they weren't the most ordinary lifeforms in the city, but this little animal before them was right out of the ballpark.

“ _Metcha kairashī ya_!” Hiro exclaimed in a squeaky voice, his eyes dilated and shiny along with his hands held up and pressed against his cheeks in glee.

“Whoa! Who did this fella's makeup?” Mon mused it loud, his head tilted slightly while he crouched to face the creature at eye level.

“Now that's a catch!” Hoku quipped, gently resting a hand on Mon’s shell for support as her leaned in to take a closer look.

“What an exceptional specimen! Boy, am I glad Uzuki captured it.” Basho wiggled his fingers in a newly unlocked state of fascination.

“Basho, don't be like that!” Uzuki protested, shifting the creature in her hands in another direction, holding it away from the eager teen terrapin scientist. “This little guy’s just alone and defenseless, probably hungry. We gotta help him out.”

“Well, not to pop everyone's party balloon,” Hoku interjected, hanging a pointed finger in the direction of the colorful dog-cat-thing, “but maybe we should be more bothered by the fact that this thing’s the one flashing around like a ghost, snatching our _fugu_.”

“Maybe he's just hungry,” Uzuki lightly suggested, “I wouldn’t be surprised if he tried saying ‘please’ before.”

“Well, if he is, he better not eat the whole _fugu_ ,” Mon said. “I was gonna ask Basho to cut out all the bad parts before I try out my _obanzai_ magic.”

“Well, if you want my recipe footnote, critters like that one can eat up just about anything people can get sick from,” Basho said with his arms crossed over his chest. “It wouldn't be shocking if he didn't waste a single piece.”

Hiro paid no mind to whatever his brothers were disputing at the moment. Bending over and leaning in closer to the animal, he did his best to put on his lovely face. “Well, what matters right now is that this adorable critter is in good hands.” Turning his attention directly to the creature, he wasted no time in being affectionate. “Ain’t that right, cutie?” he said in a cutesy voice, “Yes, you are? Yes, you are.”

“Hey now, Hiro, you don't need to go that far,” Uzuki said to him, uneasily but humorously. “I don't know if this little guy even gets what you’re doing.”

Hiro playfully scoffed at this insinuation. “What? You can't go too far in giving little guys a little love, even if they look a little lost.” He took another moment to have a personal closeup with the critter, saying proudly, “Besides…I'm one with the animals.”

The critter immediately got itself out of Uzuki's hands with a spring-loaded leap, using the momentum and midair eye level with Hiro’s face to land a barrage of claw swings and scratched. By the time it landed back down on the grass, Hiro’s face was abound with marks on his green skin, his red bandana mask in tatters and a wide-eyed look of disbelief plastered all over the big lug's visage. Before he could react further, the creature then hopped down and scampered away, vanishing from the scene completely.

“Well, looks like that critter didn’t wanna be one with you,” Basho made his observation. Hiro didn’t utter a single word in response, just opting to remain in stunned dramatically mock-heartbroken silence.

Uzuki sighed with a frown and got ready to stand up, believing that what happened was the end of the encounter and nothing more could be done. She took one step forward…and slipped forward off her feet, erratically losing balance. “Whoa! Whoa! WHHOOOOOOAAA!!!!!!” she hollered, spinning her arms in all directions in a ditch effort to avoid falling. It wasn’t enough to stop her wobbling though, as after a few seconds, she toppled forward in the direction of the river’s waters below.

Fortunately for her, Hiro was quick enough to grab her and pull her right back upright. “Whew! Thanks, Hiro!” she sighed in relief. She then looked down on the ground for the thing that tripped her. She knelt down and picked it up. “Hey guys, did any of you mean to just leave a _fugu_ lying around?” The guys just shook their heads and held up their hands in response.

“Littering’s beneath me, so you got the wrong guy,” Basho dismissed with a turn of his head.

“Come on, Uzuki. You know I wouldn’t waste a perfectly good fish,” Mon reasoned.

“I was just trying to catch some and go home. Don’t look at me,” Hiro carefully defended himself with two hands held in front of him.

“I’m just glad we even still got a fish,” Hoku reminded Uzuki and everyone else, even if he sounded like he was deflecting. His relaxed casual tone remained the same despite what had just happened.

Hiro took Hoku’s point and shot a glance at the one spare pufferfish in Uzuki’s hands. “I thought that dog-cat-thing snatched ‘em all away. You think he dropped it?”

Uzuki took her turn to have a look at the fish. “ _Wakarahen_ , Hiro. Maybe he left it for us…”

“Oh, so now that random fish-stealing dog-cat-thing that scratched up Hiro’s face is suddenly nice?” Hoku felt the need to lampshade yet again from his leaning position on Hiro’s side, which Hiro himself had not ignored.

“Hey, I said _wakarahen_ ,” Uzuki put up both her hands in surrender, the pufferfish now in one, “I just thought it can’t be all bad if we’re left with at least one and not none, right?”

“Well then,” Mon cut in, putting his hands together in one sharp clap, “If we’re taking this fish home, who’s still up for fresh steaming _Fugu Kara-age_ , courtesy of Dr. Delicate Touch?”

The group’s mood changed instantly, everyone jumping up and down with their hands raised in affirmation, accompanied by Basho getting right next to Mon and detailing his intentions for ensuring the pufferfish’s correct, complete, and thorough preparation on the stove. Of course, Mon wasn’t going to make it all by himself…

Unbeknownst to them, sitting on a tree branch several meters away from Samondo River was the dog-cat-thing of yellow and blue patterns. For the moment, it watched them briefly before hopping away, a pufferfish hanging from its mouth as it chewed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A new character has appeared! Does this one sound familiar?  
> -  
> Fun Facts:  
> Nishiyodogawa ward (西淀川 区) is one of Osaka City’s most northernmost wards. It has a history of being an industrial area and is home to the main headquarters of Ezaki Glico, the candy company behind the Glico Running Man.  
> The Samondo River (左門殿川) is a stream that’s branched off from the larger Kanzaki River (神崎川) before reconnecting at the Nakashima River (中島川) further south. 
> 
> Terms:  
> Mizu no Miyako (水の都): "City of Water" (one of Osaka City’s nicknames)  
> Tenka no Daidokoro (天下の台所): "Kitchen of the Nation" (Osaka City’s most well-known nickname; back in the Edo Period, it was known as the main hub for the rice trade - today, it's known for its passion for high quality cooking)  
> Daidokoro (台所): kitchen  
> Fugu (フグ): pufferfish  
> Fugu Kara-age (フグ唐揚 or ふぐ唐揚): deep-fried pufferfish  
> Obanzai (おばんざい): traditional style home cooking - specifically homemade cuisine comprised of vegetables and seafood prepared simply, incorporates all ingredients (especially ones usually tossed in the trash anywhere else) to ensure nothing is wasted; interestingly enough, this originated from Kyoto which exclusively holds ownership rights to that name/label – if a food is going to be called "obanzai", its ingredients need to be sourced in Kyoto
> 
> Dialect words/phrases:  
> Akan (あかん): "No way!" | Standard Japanese: Dame (だめ)  
> Shimouta (しもうた or 仕舞うた): "Oh no!"  
> Otto (おっと): "Gotcha!"  
> Metcha kairashī ya (めっちゃかいらしいや): "It’s so cute!" | Standard Japanese: Sugoku kawairashī da (すごく可愛らしいだ)  
> Wakarahen (分からへん): "I don’t know" | Standard Japanese: Wakaranai (分からない)


	3. Sewer-Ojin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Introducing a familiar family member and teacher...
> 
> Just so you know, there's no Osaka trivia for this chapter, as the introduction stated above is what's important at the moment. But since this one's about where the turtle bros call home below the city, I'll leave you this to give you an idea of what the lair might be like:  
> http://www.jimmyr.com/blog/Japanese_Underground_Sewer_226_2007.php
> 
> By the way, the chapter title is derived from "Suijin" (水神), the term for supernatural water beings in Japan's Shinto religion.

Deep down in a cavernous system of tunnels connecting to one big main shaft, sounds of life echoed across the walls. One could be forgiven for attributing those sounds to that of sneaky critters making their homes below the busy urban streets, but that wasn't really the case here. In fact, those sounds were more akin to a TV set playing, with someone helping themselves to treats.

“Okay guys, remember the plan?”

Hiro made sure not to whisper to his brothers too loudly, since they all had to rely on their dad not hearing what they were up to in order to make the plan work. Mon eagerly nodded and gave two thumbs up. Hoku tilted his head to the side with a nonchalant grin. Basho…well, he was calibrating something. Hiro though those responses were good enough, so he turned back to face the task at hand.

On the wall of one larger room, a theater screen-sized projection was playing, bright, colorful, and in hi-def. The display unsurprisingly emanated from a projector that sat on an end table in the center of the room. Standing next to it was an armchair, one that was very puffy and spacious due to the way the cushions were so big and round.

“So how do we get _Oton_ out of the room without him asking why?” Hoku made sure to mention.

“Shh!” Hiro shushed his brother, pushing his own hand on top of Hoku’s head for good measure. “I’m working on that!”

The sounds of the show playing from the surrounding speakers had just rang out its latest catchy pop tune when the plan was put into motion. “ _Sunmahen_ , _Mokuhen-Oton_ ,” Hiro spoke out first, sliding sideways in a zip-like entrance in front of the projected tv show playing. His 3 younger brothers also followed his lead, standing on both sides of him and imitating his jovial but consciously polite posture. Hiro continued, “We were just thinking. You mind if we borrow the living room for ourselves tonight?”

Sitting on the armchair, a short and round grey-furred rat in a brownish-green robe was slurping a mega Slurpee-sized drink from a straw. He was in the middle of taking his drink when he heard Hiro's voice reach his ears through the slurping. He paused to open one eye to take a look at his eldest son. He quietly snorted, which then turned into a snicker, which then grew into a giggle. “Haha, good one _Aka-chan_ ,” he let out a rumble, “you might just be funnier than _Murasaki-bō_ this time!”

“Told you I was funny…” Basho whispered smugly but then gasped once he took a double take to process the rest of the statement he heard, turning to look at Hiro and sounding incredulous, “… _Tei_ , _choumatte_! How are you funnier than me?”

Hiro, on the other hand, couldn't help but beam from his dad's words. _“I did it,”_ he thought happily and tearfully, _“I got Ojin to laugh the same way Basho does.”_ But he opted to continue with the plan, feeling the need to say something to keep the ball rolling. “Well, it’s just that…we see you at the TV all the time, and maybe…” He wasn’t getting anywhere with this.

“Hey _Ojin_ , how about I hook up your show in your bedroom? It’d be even lazier.” Basho quickly butted in, though he did so rather aggressively which may have been due to the remark of him not being the funniest anymore.

“Nuh-uh,” the rat dad known as **Mokuhen** shook his head, “I’ve been sitting on this chair for hours now and my _oido_ is asleep, just the way I like it.”

Hiro’s thoughts raced in his mind. His plan was going downhill fast. It was supposed to be simple: the guys would go in, politely convince their dad to leave the room for a bit, and they would all get a grab at his private collection he kept on the shelf that stood to the side. “Well _Ojin_ ,” he tried to sedge in a second time, his fingers on both hands twiddling against one another, “We were thinking that…we got into those American movies about Lou Jitsu again recently and we wanted more time to look at his moves.”

Mokuhen burped. “Oh, so you want to be a Lou Jitsu star?” he asked the boys with a curiously challenging tone.

Hiro was furiously nodding his head with a smile, his cunning spirit now having returned as some fruit was being borne. “Yeah! Yeah! We wanna get some Lou Jitsu study time! And we all know you like Lou Jitsu too, so…” Everyone held their breaths, hoping they offered something of substance to get through to the rat man with.

The rat-man sat quietly on his armchair for a few seconds, then took a bite of the cake slice sitting at his side. “Alright then.” The boys were letting out quiet cries of victory, accompanied by the exchanges of fist pumps with one another. But Mokuhen lifted a closed hand to his face. “Ahem.” The boys turned their eyes back to him immediately. “Since you’ve watched those movies before, I figure we should have a pop review first.” Surprisingly for the boys who knew him all their lives, he hopped off his behind and stood on his own two feet atop the seat cushion. “ _Saa, hajimede_.”

The boys eyed him in anticipation. “So, where do we start?” Hiro asked carefully.

Mokuhen smirked. “Right here, of course.” He tensed his legs, a little bounce on the seat cushion giving the boys a vague clue to what he was doing, but not enough to actually have an answer. But the rat didn’t give them any time to ponder before he launched into the air like a rocket, springing off the chair. “Your practice starts now!”

The boys, with their wide eyes, saw the silhouette of their dad from above do a somersaulting twirl in the air, his tail whipping in an arc, before coming back down hard on their position. They instantly knew this was not going to be painless.

* * *

It was only for about 10 minutes, but for the boys, it felt like 10 hours of getting their shells kicked nonstop. They always knew, at the back of their minds, that their dad was an expert at ninjutsu or something, but they never thought it would go so far as imitating every one of Lou Jitsu’s moves more smoothly and elegantly than any of the four. His reputation as a couch potato only made that revelation all that more confounding. 10 minutes of getting tail-whipped head first into practice-ramen bowls was enough for Basho, Hoku, and Mon to decide on urging Hiro to move on to Phase 2 of the plan.

“As usual, your skills are still in the ‘knockoff’-stage,” Mokuhen sauntered off back to his armchair.

“So…” Hiro wheezed as he shakily lifted his head out of the splattered ramen noodles and lifted a trembling hand with his pointer finger unfolded, “…do we get the room?”

The father of the turtles laughed again. “Of course, why not?” He didn’t quite catch the boys letting out a collective sight of relief, with even Mon letting his head fall back down face first into the noodle bowl he was recently splattered into. “It can’t hurt to let you keep me company tonight.” Mon yanked his head back out of the noodle bowl while the other three went from being relieved to being in disbelief.

“Uh, actually,” Hoku felt it was his turn to butt in, “We were asking for private bro time here.”

“Private bro time?” the rat immediately turned around, a little surprised by what he heard. “Brr, no thanks! That should be something only done in your rooms.” Basho thought of raising his hand to vehemently clarify that it was none at all what their dad thought they were implying, but Mokuhen wasn't finished. “So why don't you watch Lou Jitsu with me, so I can walk you through the steps?”

That…wasn’t what the boys expected. They were thinking he was going to boot them all back out and force them to come up with a new plan, but…he was offering to share the living room and his TV time with the boys. Well, the plan to get him out of the room was simply so they could grab a particular item from his shelf of collectibles.

_The item in question was one that possessed a detail the boys had seen before: a stylized letter M with a dash on the rightmost line. They weren't sure why their dad had something that matched that description, but they had recognized that same pattern in another part of the city while out exploring the rooftops. It was Mon who caught a glimpse of the carved sigil on the brick wall of a random building and alerted his 3 older brothers of the discovery. Even more so, all of them were sure that they caught a glimpse of the carving glowing a little bit. Knowing that a glowing brick wall was nowhere near ordinary, Hiro tried to touch it to see he is he could make it do something, but the glow completely died down before his fingers reached the brickwork. It was then that they remembered having seen the same marking on one of their dad’s antique mini-vases, leading to what they tried to do now._

Even if the plan wasn’t going the way they wanted, sitting with their dad to watch movies together wasn’t a bad trade-off. Hiro figured that this could still work as a distraction. He turned to Basho, Hoku, and Mon. _“Keep him talking,”_ he whispered.

About a half-hour into the movie, three of the turtles – especially Mon – were asking their dad question after question about everything in the movie, from the moves of the main actor Lou Jitsu to the way the scenes were shot, all to keep his attention on them and not on Hiro who was tiptoeing behind towards the collectibles shelf. Hiro was only within a few inches of having the tiny M-marked vase, all digits of his hand about to close in on it.

“You know, boys?” Mokuhen spoke up. Hiro froze up, rushing back to his former seat next to his dad's chair at the same time he noticed him get off it. “It really makes me feel good to see you having an interest in the things I like as well. I’d like to give you something.” At that same moment, Hiro was glad to have moved back to his seat as he didn't want the rat noticing what he was trying to do at all.

The four boys watched as he went over to the shelf lined with collectibles and used his tail to scan for an item. They all tensed and held their breaths while they watched him, hoping with all their might that he would pick the vase they were after from the start. The tip of his tail went left and right, up and down, until it slowed down to stop at an item.

“And here you are,” he remarked, wrapping the tail tip around a tiny ring-like trinket next to the little vase. The turtles’ anticipated expressions deflated on the spot. The rat turned around to hold the little trinket in his tail, his arms behind his back that showed everyone just how relaxed he was, even if he was always like that. “I think you all deserve something of mine as a present. Hope you like it.” With a flick of his tail, he sent the little trinket flying up into the air and falling in an arc towards them, being caught in Hiro’s hands.

“So, is this thing, like, ‘our’ present or just for one of us?” Basho spoke up warily for the rest of his brothers.

Mokuhen shrugged his shoulders and lifted both his hands in indifference. “Eh! _Shiran kedo na_! Back to my show!”

In the same second after he said that, all four boys were simultaneously pushed out of the living room, sliding across the floor without giving them a chance to stand. In no time at all, he went back in to resume his sitting and snacking.

The boys blinked silently, their eyes initially observing their dad’s quickness to indolence and then slowly swiveling down to the little trinket held in both of Hiro’s hands.

“Well, we got something off dad’s shelf,” Hoku broke the silence.

“Sure, but not the one we wanted anyway,” Basho huffed. “Just how’s this trinket’s supposed to…” he trailed off as he followed his three brothers’ concentrated stares at the item, noticing the insignia on its main face. “…oh.”

“Guys,” Hiro announced quietly and happily as he kept his eyes on the mystical stylized M-symbol on the trinket, “I think we should really thank _Ojin_ for this later.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Terms:  
> "Mokuhen" (木片): splinter, piece of wood  
> "-chan" (ちゃん): honorific that addresses a person with endearment and emotional closeness – mainly for close friends, family members, lovers, young women, adolescent girls, cute/small animals, and babies + little kids  
> "-bō" (坊 or ぼう): honorific that serves the same purpose as “-chan” above, except that when it comes to young children, it’s used exclusively for boys  
> "Aka" (赤): red (color)  
> "Murasaki" (紫): purple (color)  
> **** Note 1: When Hiro addresses his dad as "Mokuhen-oton", he uses "oton" like a title/honorific and says it last/after the name. It's true for any title/honorific and when addressing anyone. Example -> "General [Name]" is spoken in Japanese as "[Name]-General", so in Hiro's case, he's effectively calling his dad "Papa Mokuhen". Also just like how it is with the original, "Mokuhen" is not the actual name, just an alias/second name.  
> **** Note 2: You know how Hiro was addressed by his father as “Aka-chan”, which is supposed to mean that he’s being called “Red” in an endearing familial way. But did you know that when you put together the words “Aka” and “-chan”, it forms a separate vocabulary word, meaning “baby” (赤ちゃん “akachan” in Standard Japanese | Kansai/Osaka dialect: ややこ “yayako”). It might make you see that little remark in a different light…  
> **** Note 3: Also, the honorific “-bo” sounds like “Bo staff” (aka – purple turtle’s signature weapon), don’tcha think?
> 
> Dialect words/phrases:  
> Oton (おとん): Dad (casually addressed) | Standard Japanese: Otōsan (お父さん)  
> Sunmahen (すんまへん): "Excuse me/us" (for interruptions) | Standard Japanese: Suminasen (すみません)  
> Tei (てい): "Hey!" (as in ‘Hey, you!’, attention-grabbing exclamation) | Standard Japanese: Kora (コラ)  
> Choumatte (ちょうまって): "Wait a minute!" | Standard Japanese: Chottomatte (ちょっとまって)  
> Oido (おいど): butt (a person’s behind/rear) | Standard Japanese: Oshiri (お尻)  
> Ojin (おじん): Pops (colloquial term for ‘dad’ or ‘grandpa’) | Standard Japanese: Jiji (じじ)  
> Saa, hajimede (さぁ、始めで): "Let’s get started" | Standard Japanese: Saa, hajimeyou (さぁ、始めよう)  
> Shiran kedo na (知らんけどな): “Don’t know, don’t care” | Standard Japanese: Shirimasenshi ki ni shimasen (知りませんし、気にしません)


	4. Shinpi-tekina Docha (Part 1)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter gets into the show's familiar territory, complete with bringing back a character I've introduced two chapters ago along with a couple more guys you might also recognize. (but it's okay if you don't...)
> 
> Have fun!

“Hey guys, look who it is!”

The guys and Uzuki were just about to leave **Chiyozaki** for their next planned evening outing. At least they would have, but due to Hiro having just spotted something while passing by the baseball field in **Matsushima Park** , the other four had to stop to look at what the red-masked turtle found. In fact, it wasn't so much a new discovery as it was more like an impromptu reunion.

“Him again?” Uzuki remarked with a tone in her voice that implied a combination of amusement and serendipity. “Looks like swimming around in Samondo wasn’t enough.”

The five were currently face to face with the yellow and blue-furred dog-cat-thing that they first encountered back in Nishiyodogawa ward a little while ago. Since the critter had ditched them first, they assumed they weren't going to see him again, at least for a long while, but here he was, shivering and all by his lonesome in the middle of **Nishi ward**.

“Hey there, little buddy,” Mon greeted the critter with his signature warm-hearted greeting, “What are you doing this far in town?”

“You here for more fish?” Hoku added, “Because if so, you're out of luck and second time’s not the charm.”

At the same time, Hiro crouched down with his hands on his knees to talk to the critter. “Hi again!” he greeted it in his cutesy voice once again. “Wat’cha doin' here now, huh?” He watched the animal blink without making a peep, not even fidgeting once. “You scared? Want me to hold you, keep you from the big bad danger?” In a gesture of goodwill, Hiro lifted both his hands to scoop up the little animal off the ground. “Come here. Let me be your Hiro.”

Hiro's hands inched closer to the creature until it was within reach of his fingertips. Once that happened, the animal hopped up and bounced onto his palms…and then went straight for his face, scratching at it relentlessly with a hiss. Within that same moment, the creature then made a beeline for Uzuki, leaping into her arms.

“Aww, now I'm pretty sure this ain't because of the _fugu_ from earlier,” she giggled from the critter licking her cheeks with its forked tongue. Hiro could only say nothing, except that he briefly ruminated on how he got rejected and scratched up by a little cute animal twice in a row.

“So Basho, any idea what he is?” Uzuki looked to the purple-masked turtle who carefully approached the little animal.

Bash leaned in to take a closer look at the creature held in Uzuki's hands, even examining the little luminescent green brooch tried around its neck. “Maybe it's a new breed of Corgi, or Angora, or something?”

“Funny. I thought you were gonna call it a nuclear St. Bernard,” Hiro remarked with a mutter. To his surprise, it earned him a droopy-eyed look of disapproval from the others.

“Dude, no… Just no,” Hoku sighed. But his attention was immediately grabbed by the sound of a gruff voice cutting the air behind the group.

“Hey! You kids!”

Everyone turned around to face the source of the rough masculine voice that caught their attention, seeing a pair of imposing men in jogging suits with a couple puppies secured over their chests with harnesses. One was stocky, bald, and had a tiny goatee, while the other was thin, had a moustache, and had a full head of long hair. Despite the conventionally cute look this stylistic combination gave off, their faces told otherwise, with the grim and joyless expression wrinkling their features marked by eyes so squinted that they may as well have been walking around blind.

“Uh oh, we got company!” Hiro whispered harshly to the group. “Do the thing!”

All four of the turtles immediately zipped apart from each other and faced the two men with their backs straight and their hands behind them. They put on their best innocent smiles. “Pardon us, good sirs,” Hoku spoke up first, putting his practiced ventriloquist skills to work, “Can you direct us to the nearest expo building in the city for a sci-fi convention we are currently dressed for?”

“Tricky turtle outfits and makeup, right?” Mon added, playing around with the badge on his plastron.

“Yeah,” Basho 'enthusiastically’ added, “We’re just a bunch of turtle costumers who are totally not real turtles pretending to be fake ones!” Uzuki tried to cover for him with an overdone smile of her own, ignoring how Basho whispered to himself about ‘nailing it’.

Hoku could only feel disappointment towards his older brother’s performance. “Dude, you really gotta take your character more seriously,” he whispered to him offhandedly.

The group didn't have to wait long for the two men to respond. “We’re not here for your dress up interviewing. We are here for that little creature you have. Hand it over…how do you say…‘ _kanari onegai_ ’…or we punish you.”

“Uh, p-punish us?” Mon stammered. “This ain't your dog…cat…pet-thing, is it?”

“Hey now,” Hiro butted in with a more scolding tone, “I don't know what your deal is, but I’m pretty sure I know a danger-stranger when I hear one!”

“Meaning?” the other man growled.

“Meaning, uh…” Hiro scrambled his brain for the best smackdown answer, “meaning you’re not the guys this little fella belongs with! You back off, busters!”

Uzuki felt more confidence from Hiro making the first line of defense. “Yeah!” she tried to be fierce, hugging the critter hanging in her hands closer to her chest. “And if you think of stepping to my friend to step to this little guy, you’re gonna have to…step to me!”

The two men’s scowls didn’t change at all. “Very well. You kids don’t scare us with your clumsy fashions and nerd voices. Give us the creature and run along before you make us destroy you.”

“Nerd voices? This is my actual voice,” Basho objected.

“Well you better be scared, ‘cause if you’re not, you’ll wish you were!” Hiro rebutted, taking an aggressive stance.

“What’s wrong with my voice?” Basho earnestly wanted to know. Inconveniently for him, he wasn’t going to get his answer any time soon.

The two men’s squinty eyes suddenly snapped open, exposing pairs of piercing neon-pink lights which simultaneously set their bodies aglow with that same color. Holographic globules of dark blackish-purple circled around their limbs and torsos in tendril-like streams, followed by their bodies gradually enlarging to the point that they began appearing more and more muscular and segmented.

“Whoa!” Hoku gawked at what he was seeing.

“ _Sonai_!” Mon exclaimed in concurrence.

“Sweet Umbra Witch!” Hiro gasped in his own expression of disbelief.

The little puppies initially held in harnesses changed too, being released onto the ground and rapidly growing larger, most notably looking more adultlike, feral, and beastly until they now took on the forms of scraggly bear-sized wolves.

The five kids were in complete shock, having witnessed the transformation of a couple men with puppies into a pair of beast-riding violet-armored swordsmen – Hiro swore they reminded him of samurai, only except for their long teeth and bug-eyed helmets. There was also the fact that they both were wielding different weapons, with one holding a double-pronged sword and the other a halberd with a double-pronged blade shaped like a Chinese paper fan.

The kids blinked, staring wide-eyed at the two unusually large and threatening riders. “So…you guys from Kanto?” Hoku asked them.

Everyone else seemed to deflate even further from hearing what he said. “Seriously, Hoku?” Mon chastised his older blue-masked brother.

“What? I’m not allowed to joke about the craziest thing I’ve ever seen? That’s how I stay sane!” Hoku protested nervously.

“Well, either way,” Hiro interjected, pulling out his pair of twin sais from his belt and held them at the ready while in a battle stance, “This is perfect! Now’s our chance to use these babies!” Taking his queue, the other three turtles took out their weapons too – Basho readied his metal-plated staff, Hoku drew out his twin katana swords, and Mon held his pair of nunchakus. “Whip out the _wakizashi_!”

“Uh, we agreed to reserve ' _wakizashi_ ' for samurai-based adventures, okay?” Basho casually reminded his elder brother.

The turtles didn't have any time to make a first move, as the two bug-eyed warrior riders charged at them first, their bladed weapons held up at the ready. The doglike beasts snarled as they ran across the sand of the baseball field.

“ _Kamehen_ , guys” Basho said confidently. With a twirl of his staff, said staff unfolded at both ends to deploy twin rocket turbines. “Hanshin maul!” he shouted and threw his staff, causing the weapon to spin through the air like a throwing knife thanks to its own firing rocket power. In one second, the staff would smack into the approaching mook as a twin-rocket hammer should.

The staff arced straight up in the air, passing by the armored rider completely as it slowed down and sputtered. “Oh no! No! Oh, come on!” Basho exclaimed in dismay. Everyone, the two riders included, gawked at the surprisingly unimpressive display.

However, before the thing conked out completely, Uzuki noticed the dog-cat-thing jumping out of her arms as it watched the flying staff and instantly blinked out of sight in a flash of blue light. With everyone watching what was happening above, the critter reappeared in another flash of light and clamped its teeth around the staff, then flashing away again. Then the creature flashed right into Basho’s arms and dropped the staff into his hands.

“Whoa, hey, it plays fetch!” Basho remarked in amazement as the critter simultaneously flashed out of his arms back into Uzuki's embrace once again. “And it teleports – _Nante kotteya_! It teleports!” Basho went from amazement to startled shock in the blink of an eye. He was too wrapped up in his excitement-induced stupor for a second too long by the time he noticed one of the armored riders pointing his sword at him, charging up and discharging an energy blast directly into his plastron. The impact sent the purple-masked turtle gadgeteer flying into the sideline benches with a crunching crash.

“Basho! _Daijōbudakka!?_ ” Uzuki cried.

Basho raised a pointed index finger above the mess of shattered wood. “Pro-tip: Bad guy’s inexplicable glowing sword blast – extremely painful.” A grunt of pain could be heard from him as he let his hand drop back down again.

Hiro and Mon got right into the fray. “Okay, Mon! Here's the plan! You get the guy that looks like a Gundam knockoff! I'll take care of the guy that looks like an EVA toy!” Both the red and orange-masked turtles had to move fast as they narrowly avoided a sword strike.

Mon, at the same time, was already off to a rough start with one of the giant wolves immediately chasing him and snapping at his shell. “They look exactly the same,” he frantically clarified, “and they don't look like either one of those things!”

“ _Oi! Doko ni ikunnen?_ ” Hoku called to them both. He, however, noticed the armored rider with the purple halberd approaching him from behind and turned around. He sighed. “You just had to be a Colonel Sanders, didn't you?” He readied his sword and instantly made a mad dash for the guy. With a spring-loaded leap, he commenced with a circular double-bladed slash. “And _Sutoraiku_! You’re out!” he swung, ready to come down hard on the guy like a batter to a pitcher’s ball.

*CLANG*

 _“Stuck the landing,”_ Hoku thought confidently. After a couple seconds, he expected to hear a thud indicative of a fall or collapse, but it was eerily silent. He snuck a peek, only to sweat in nervous disbelief as he saw himself holding only the hilts of his swords, said swords now bladeless. He took a glance at the rider’s mount clenching the two snapped off blades in its teeth, then shattered into many more pieces in one bite. “My swords!” Hoku groaned in lament.

“Hahaha –” was all the halberd-wielding rider was able to mockingly utter before he was interrupted by a thrown sword hilt to the head, making him growl in hostility.

“I don't need swords to beat you!” Hoku boasted. He ran to the tall metal-wired fence that lined the perimeter of the baseball field. He went fast enough to run up the fencing until he was above the rider's head. “I got my mad skills!” He finished his boast with a leap off the fence. He promptly landed face first into the sand, having sailed right over the rider and his mount without even touching either of them. The rider had no words for what he just saw.

Meanwhile, Hiro was batted away by the sword-wielding rider with no luck in landing a hit on him at all. He was hit hard enough to feel his shell colliding with and bouncing off the metal mesh wiring of the surrounding fence. Hiro thought of something else. “Okay. Mon! Ninja mode.” He and Mon jumped up and bounced off the main poles connecting the fences as they ascended above and out of the rider's reach, retreating into the darkness of the night sky.

The rider, no longer on his mount but now standing on the ground with his own two feet, growled as he scanned the top of the baseball field's bordering fence. After only a couple seconds, he pointed his sword to the top of one of the field’s giant metal poles outside the fence, outing Hiro and Mon hiding behind the cluster of lightbulbs positioned on top of the metal pole. Apparently, they both forgot that the lights were still on.

“Okay,” Hiro gulped, “there's a…chance he…might…still see us.” Both turtles leapt off and back down to dodge another blast shot from the rider's sword. “Okay, ‘new’ new plan!” With a nod, Mon jumped into the air and retracted his head and limbs into his shell. Hiro grabbed him in one hand and prepared to launch him like a football. “Turtle wind!” the red-masked turtle let out a battle cry and threw Mon as hard as he could. Mon’s shell hurdled towards the armored warrior…and the guy caught him in one hand.

Mon immediately came out of his shell and went into stage 2 of him and his brother’s planned attack. “HHWWAAAAAAHHH!” he yelled as he brandished his nunchakus and spun them, flailing them in the direction of the swordsman’s face.

All the guy did was silently watch as Mon bonked himself in the head with the nunchakus one after the other, not a single hit landing on his adversary. He only stopped at last when he felt he had too many painful bumps and lumps to keep concentrating. “ _Mō jūbundakka?_ ” the little turtle moaned through his accidentally self-inflicted pain. The bigger guy only responded by levitating him in a field of dark purple light and throwing him aside, sending him crashing onto the sand. At the same time, he caught Mon’s chucks midair and crushed them in his hand.

“ _Oi_!” Hiro interrupted angrily, readying his twin sais. “Why don’t you pick on someone my size?” He growled at the enemy with as much ferocity as his usually friendly self could muster and sprinted right at him with his sais directed at the guy with the center tips first.

The swordsman didn’t bother raising his own weapon to defend himself. With his free left hand, he snapped his fingers and his canine mount immediately descended upon Hiro, chasing the larger turtle as he ran the other way screaming. Hiro was practically jumping as he ran, just to keep from getting his shell caught by the beast’s snapping jaws. The wolf-like monster chased him across the baseball diamond, from home base to second base to third base, even skimming the outfield the whole time.

While the beast didn’t bite Hiro in the shell upon catching up to him, it did slam its jaws around his head, shaking him around in the air like a ball, bone, or chew toy. The beast then threw him into the air, sending him on an arc that had him crash-landing onto a set of sideline benches on the opposite side of the diamond. Hiro coughed from the kicked-up dust as he tried to regain his senses after impacting, just in time for the other bug-eyed warrior to walk right up to him and stomp on his sais, crushing them into useless pieces. Hiro was aghast at witnessing the sudden crushing loss of his only weapons. He also looked up just in time to see the armored warrior swing his halberd like a baseball bat and send him flying once again. He landed right on top of the pile made of his other three brothers stacked atop one another.

The two bug-eyed armored warriors advanced on the incapacitated brothers who laid dogpiled on the sand and got ready to finish them off. But they were swiftly interrupted by wads of sand hitting them in their eyes and breastplates.

“Hey! Fake-Gundam and EVA-toy!”

The two, each raising an arm to shield their eyes, turned their heads up to look directly at Uzuki, who was grabbing handfuls of sand off the baseball field and throwing them while simultaneously holding on to the little dog-cat-critter. The teen human girl yelled at them again. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll leave my friends and this little guy alone!”

She got ready to throw another wad of sand when one of the armored thugs raised an open hand. Said hand began glowing with the same purple bubbling energy. Uzuki noticed too late that a transparent purple bubble formed around the little critter she was carrying, trapping it inside. “What the –” she gasped, watching as the little critter tried to teleport out of the bubble repeatedly but found itself reappearing inside the spherical energy field each time, unable to get out. As if it couldn’t get any worse, the bug-eyed warrior responsible for the critter’s current predicament flexed his hand, causing the bubble entrapping the critter to be pulled towards him.

“No! NO! _Hanashite!_ ” Uzuki grunted as she tried to pull the orb in the opposite direction away from the two thugs, but it was no use. Even when she dug her heels into the sand, she was still pulled along with the orb until it was encircled in the caster’s hand. Once his grip was secured, he knocked Uzuki away with another burst of energy.

The armored guy who currently held the trapped critter in his hand used his other hand to hold up a flat piece of translucent crystal. He spoke into it like a walkie-talkie. “ _Danshaku_ , this is Gāmu. We have the agent and the vial,” he reported, paying no mind to the critter snarling at him inside the purple bubble but instead emphasized on the green brooch around its neck, the greenness apparently made clear to be some kind of contained liquid. He turned to his partner. “Furekkī, time to leave!”

His partner turned around to lift his hand towards a concrete wall separating the field from rows of elevated spectator stands above it. With circular hand motions, the wall gradually became engraved with an M-shaped insignia made of light, a little dash cutting through one side of the M. The M-symbol was immediately swallowed up by a circular opening, twisting the concrete from a solid flat face into that of a gargoyle-like Oni, a toothy and fanged open mouth exposing a tunnel of a digital crisscross texture within.

“Whoa!” the turtle bros marveled at what they were seeing after recovering and getting off each other. No doubt that those two mysterious assailants could do such a thing – they could already transform and toss the guys in the air without touching them, so they surely couldn't get any less weird.

Without any delay, the two armored riders spurred their mounts to run straight into the magically created entrance. The entrapped dog-cat-thing remained in their grasp as it was taken into the portal with them.

“ _Nekoinu-mon!_ ” Uzuki exclaimed as she took off running after the critter’s kidnappers. Going as fast as she could to stay on their tails, she ran even faster upon noticing the portal begin to rapidly close behind them as soon as they passed through. She braced both feet and tensed the muscles in her legs once she felt she got close enough.

“Uzuki! Hold on!” Hiro called to her, hoping he could make her wait, but the girl had already jumped through the portal right as it closed. Hiro followed right behind her and jumped for the portal too. He jumped…right as the portal closed completely, and the big turtle bonked headfirst into a flat concrete wall. He then landed on his shell back in the sand.

“Ow,” Hiro winced as he rubbed his sore noggin, pushing himself upright on the elbow of his other arm. But he quickly snapped back to his senses. “Uzuki!” he called again, pressing his hands on the cement wall and scanned the vertical surface with his eyes as though he were checking for something left over.

“I think she's okay, ‘cause I think the stands have space under them,” Hoku warily gave his opinion.

“Uzuki!” Hiro tried to call for her again, knocking on the cement wall and putting his head on its surface to listen for an echo, his other three brothers following his gesture. “Are you under the seats?” No answer. Hiro looked to Basho. “How do we get her out of there?”

“Well, more importantly,” Basho clarified, “Where is 'there'?”

Hiro, Basho, and Hoku decided to try looking around the spectator stands, each one going around the foundation corners and jumping up onto the seats themselves. Mon, however, was preoccupied with examining the concrete wall with his own eyes, scanning for any traces of the former portal. He managed to spot the faint traces of the M-insignia the two armored cat-dog-nappers previously summoned a little while ago.

“Hey!” Mon gasped. “I've seen this before!” His three elder brothers regrouped around him to see what he was referring to. “In fact, I think we all have.”

“…” The older turtles wondered what their littlest brother was even saying. “Well, care to remind us where we saw it?” Hoku asked first.

Mon didn't waste a second obliging. “Remember when Hiro discovered that same symbol on a brick alley wall a few nights ago? This one looks exactly the same.”

Hiro thought about what Mon said, his eyes widening at the realization. “Yeah. Yeah! _Omahan ga tadashī ya_ , Mon! But…if there was a portal for that symbol back then too, how do we get in now? I couldn't do it then either.”

Basho took an extra look at the M-symbol which was now beginning to fade and lose its light. “Well guys, I think you should hurry up if it's anything like last time.” He pointed at the symbol for the others to see for good measure.

Hiro looked like he was about to panic, but Mon spoke up again to calm him down. “I'm pretty sure we have something like it back home. Remember when we tried to borrow something from Pops that had the same thing?”

“Hmm…yeah, _honma ya_ ,” Hoku confirmed as he recalled those events, “though I'm also pretty sure I remember Hiro's plan for that being a failure.” He didn't seem to notice Hiro looking a little irate from hearing that. All he and his brothers needed back then was a vase, one simple vase that had the same symbol on it. And of course, they didn't get it, thanks to getting anything past their dad being virtually impossible.

“Well, maybe it didn't work then, but I'm sure it'll work now!” Hiro rallied up his brothers, then gathering them together. “Alright! Here's what we’re gonna do. We’ll need 10 chickens, a gallon of rubber cement, and –”

“ _Hitsuyō nashi_ ,” Basho interrupted without giving his big bro a heads-up first. “Pops already gave us a trinket with the exact same symbol.”

The other three looked at their brainiac brother with wide eyes. “ _Honma ni_? How do you know that?” asked Mon.

“It's in my lab,” Basho replied in a deadpan tone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun Facts:  
> A “wakizashi” (脇差) is a blade donned by samurai warriors that never leaves their sides. It mainly functions as a backup/emergency sword for the samurai’s primary weapon, the katana.  
> Basho’s attack line “Hanshin maul” is a reference to the “Hanshin Tigers” baseball team (阪神タイガース).  
> Hoku’s “Colonel Sanders”-quip is a reference to “The Curse of the Colonel” (カーネルサンダースの呪い), a Japanese urban legend surrounding the Hanshin Tigers that began in 1985. It involves a statue of KFC’s founder, Ebisu Bridge, Dōtonbori Canal, and an 18-year-long losing streak.  
> Hiro's battle line "Turtle Wind" when he throws Mon is a pun on a Japan-specific term originating between 1939-1945.  
> Hoku asks the two armored Yokai riders – Gāmu and Furekkī – if they’re from the Kanto region. It’s a reference to how Japan’s capital city (you know its name), which is in that region, is often the main setting for almost all sorts of local weirdness happening in the country, more than Osaka anyway.  
> Nishi ward (西区) is one of Osaka’s central wards, sitting just west of the city’s actual center, hence its name. While mostly flat, 80% of what it used to look like was levelled by bombs during World War 2 and only started rebuilding by the mid-1960s. At the time, it was regarded as a model area for urban planning and was the subject of a land readjustment project.  
> Chiyozaki (千代崎) is an area of land in Osaka’s Nishi Ward. There’s not much to say on it other than its most notable landmarks being baseball-related: “Matsushima Park” and “Kyocera Dome Osaka”.  
> Matsushima Park (松島公園) is a community park that’s mostly known for its baseball field. If some school team needs practice or any other people simply want to play the game on their leisure time, that’s what it’s for.  
> Kyocera Dome Osaka (京セラドーム大阪), or just Osaka Dome (大阪ドーム), is a baseball stadium of a futuristic design with an enclosed dome ceiling that not only hosts baseball games, but also doubles as a concert arena. It’s the home field for the “Orix Buffaloes” baseball team (オリックス・バファローズ), though it also served as the ‘second home’-field for the Hanshin Tigers.
> 
> Dialect Words/Phrases:  
> Kanari onegai (かなりお願い): “Pretty please”  
> Sonai (そない): “You gotta be kidding me!” (disbelief) | Standard Japanese: Sonna (そんな)  
> Kamehen (かめへん): “It’s fine”, “I got this” | Standard Japanese: Kamawanai (構わない)  
> Nante kotteya (なんてこってや): “Oh my gosh!” | Standard Japanese: Nante kotoda (なんてことだ)  
> Daijōbudakka (大丈夫だっか): “Are you alright?” | Standard Japanese: Daijōbudesuka (大丈夫ですか)  
> Oi (おい): “Hey!” (used to call out someone)  
> Doko ni ikunnen (どこに行くんねん): “Where are you going?” | Standard Japanese: Doko ni iku no (どこに行くの)  
> Sutoraiku (ストライク): “Strike”  
> Mō jūbundakka (もう十分だっか): “Had enough?”, “Is it enough?” | Standard Japanese: Mō jūbundesu ka (もう十分ですか)  
> Hanashite (はなして): “Let go!” (as in ‘release your grip’)  
> Danshaku (男爵): baron  
> Neko (猫): cat  
> Inu (犬): dog  
> Mon (もん): thing (general term) | Standard Japanese: Mono (もの)  
> Omahan ga tadashī ya (おまはんが正しいや): “You’re right” | Standard Japanese: Omae ga tadashī da (お前が正しいだ)  
> Honma ya (ほんまや): “That’s true” | Standard Japanese: Hontō da (本当だ)  
> Hitsuyō nashi (必要なし): “No need”  
> Honma ni (ほんまに): “Really?” (asking for affirmation) | Standard Japanese: Hontō ni (本当に)


	5. Shinpi-tekina Docha (Part 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Introducing several more characters, most of them important. You'll know who they are. *wink*

After a few hours of rummaging through Basho’s lab back at the lair (only slightly lengthened by Basho’s relentless nitpicking over how the search was conducted), the turtle bros were back at Matsushima Park’s baseball field, standing in front of the tall concrete spectator stand where the mysterious portal used to be – where Uzuki jumped into before it closed.

“You know, a few hours ago, I would’ve thought we were young and crazy for trying this,” Basho barged in, “Now I just think we’re crazy.”

“Say what you want, Basho. Hiro can do this,” Mon refuted, “After all, if he doesn’t, well…Uzuki, nice knowing you.” Hiro tensed.

“Mon, don’t say that. You know Hiro buckles under pressure,” Hoku lightly chastised. Hiro began to sweat.

“Hoku, he gets even more nervous if you bring that up,” Basho heavily chastised, and then lowered his voice into an ominous whisper, “ _and then you can smell his fear…_ ”

Hiro yanked himself around to face his brothers, having had enough. “ _Osore-akushū o hikiokosahen!_ ” he exclaimed with a plosive burst of breath. His three little brothers just looked at him.

“Okay, so how do we make it open?” Hoku wondered aloud for everybody. Hiro only looked intently at the wall as the others carefully observed him.

“ _Working on it,_ ” Hiro answered in a whisper, concentrating more on holding the trinket up to the wall and hoping something would happen, the same way the two armored thugs did it with only a raised hand. Nothing happened. Hiro held the trinket a little closer to the wall, and even closer to the point of touching the wall when he still got no reaction from it. The utter lack of anything happening was grating on the big turtle’s nerves, and in a short time, he was punching the wall with the trinket held inside his closed fist.

“Come on!” he grunted as he pounded, paying no mind to how unimpressed his brothers looked at the moment. On the other hand, he could already feel himself cracking before the wall he was punching did. “ _Baka kabe!_ ” In a fit of frustration, he threw the trinket at the wall itself, though he didn’t count on the thing bouncing off the surface and smacking back into his head just as hard, knocking him onto the ground again.

Fortunately, Mon caught the trinket in his hand before the thing could fall onto the sand with Hiro. “How about we let the artist of the group take a poke at it?” he asked with a jesting politeness.

Hoku stepped closer to his little brother’s side, putting a hand on his shoulder. “ _Atarimaeyaro_? All I can say is that we can’t do any worse…” he bowed his head a little bit in Hiro’s direction, “…respectfully.”

“Yay,” Hiro droned from his position on the sand.

Mon stepped around his big brother and walked right up to the wall, holding the trinket between a finger and thumb. With a delicate hold, he slowly moved the trinket towards the wall in a manner indicative of precision, and it was what happened next that put his brothers into a state of awe.

The concrete wall that held up the spectator seats glowed, but it wasn’t like that of before. Instead, a web of polygonal lines formed, each one crawling over the stone like water until it formed a complex circular work of art. It was reminiscent of a Tibetan mandala, but also combined with a manhole cover. Mon smiled at the sight of it; it was just like he hoped. Without further delay, he moved the trinket across the concrete wall to redraw the M-symbol, even jumping a bit since the original symbol was so big. The M-symbol gave way to the portal reopening, exposing the vertical tunnel lined with walls of digital crisscross lines. Mon laughed a little at seeing his innate ingenuity once again working in his favor, as it did more than plenty of times before in the past.

Basho was already praising the little artist. “By the Hair-Comb Princess, it worked!”

“Huh! All I had to do was believe in myself,” Hiro quipped, equally amazed though not addressing the little one who made it work in place of him.

Hoku turned to Hiro, elbowing the bigger turtle with a soft nudge. “So leader, what’s our next move?” Hiro looked back at him.

“…” Hiro took one look at the whirlpool of light at the bottom of the tunnel, and then took a big leap into the portal. He curled his knees up to his chest and held them up with his arms, bracing himself. “ _Kyanonbōru!_ ”

“ _Kyanonbōru!_ ” the rest of his brothers cried as they followed suit, with Mon retracting his head and limbs into his shell, Basho crossing both his arms and legs over each other, and Hoku doing a somersault.

All four turtles couldn’t hold back their yells as they were swept down the grid-like tunnel. They eventually arrived at a light at the end, passing through the wormhole back into the physical realm. Inconveniently, they somehow exited the portal from a higher-than-desirable altitude. Hiro yelled incoherently as he flailed his limbs through the air while falling, landing flat on his front on a flat stone floor with a smack. Basho didn’t have any time to react to the fall to use his jetpack, on his shell with a thud. Mon wasn’t any better as he mostly hit the ground on his front with a splat, his backside sticking up a little. As for Hoku…

“ _Anzen'na chakuriku!_ ” he boasted out loud as he touched the ground on one foot with the rest of his body posed like a Shaolin monk. He did wobble a bit but readjusted his stance accordingly with a brief double-arm spin. It was when he fully balanced himself that he took the time to react at what he saw before him. “Whoa…” he gasped, his mouth hanging open as he found himself looking at a fantastical landscape. His brothers couldn’t help but parrot that same sentiment.

The four were standing within a cavern of towering heights. The ceiling of the cave stretched as high as any office building they saw on the surface and the bottom was far enough down that the boys would have thought they were on a mountain. Said cave floor was lined with structures of all sorts of design, most of them reminiscent of feudal Japan, but others appearing like architecture recognized as being from other parts of the world while some others appeared as plainly as multistory buildings in a typical human city. Winged creatures of all sorts of shapes and sizes flew across the cavern, alone or with riders, alongside hot-air balloons of faces and other assorted round shapes. Giant creatures with the height of high-rise apartments strolled across the landscape in the distance. Every building on the cave floor was made of different colored materials and awash in bright lights that highlighted its various physical measurements and dimensions. In the furthest distance, a lake could be made out with even more buildings lining the other side of said lake. 

As far as the boys could see, Osaka was already a colorful city, but this place was the same thing but dialed up to eleven. “I can already smell Hiro’s _kyōi-akushū_ ,” Hoku uttered. The others were collectively letting out gasps and words of wonder and awe at the totally not-mundane sight. At the very least, they had a good feeling it was unlike any human civilization they ever knew, thus wondering in the back of their minds how hard it would be to find humans in a place like this at all.

“ _Min'na, kotchi kotchi!_ ”

That familiar voice calling from behind snapped them out of their stupor, prompting them to turn around to see Uzuki herself standing only a few meters away. Their sense of wonder was instantly replaced by elation. “Uzuki! We missed you!” they all cried joyfully, running up to her and topping with a leaping hug, all four of them surrounding her with their own arms. They stayed like that for a few seconds before parting to get back to business.

“So, Basho, where are we?” Hiro asked his smarter brother his first question.

Basho took a moment to type something on the gadget braced on his left forearm. “Well, according to my calculations, we’re likely in a tertiary metaverse.”

“Actually,” Uzuki energetically cut in, “I’ve been exploring, and it turns out we’re in a mystic underground city deep below Osaka.”

“That was my second guess,” Basho backpedaled.

Hoku decided it was a good time to get back on track. “So where’s the dog-cat-thing?”

“He’s in there,” Uzuki answered worriedly, turning around and pointing at a dome-like structure standing on a hill-sized plateau made of rocks similar to the Giant’s Causeway in the distance. It took a bit of time, but the five made it to a door on the second level that Uzuki found earlier. The boys couldn’t help but marvel at what the interior looked like once they walked inside.

“Wu-ho! Look at the setup!” Hoku commented.

“Man, that’s big and complicated,” Hiro seconded his younger brother’s opinion.

“I’d so love to do my lab in that layout!” Basho shakily held in his glee with starry eyes.

The group had made their way to the edge of the second level-walkway they stood on, facing a towering round chamber. The room appeared to have a circular disk-like platform of stone surrounded by a moat of the same shape filled with pale green globules of an unknown slime. In the center of the platform was a column that stretched up close to an open ceiling at the top of the structure’s apparent dome, all sides of it lined with orange pill-like light bulbs.

Hiro took a glance at the center of the room below. “There’s the cat-dog!” he said to the others, glancing at the aforementioned creature contained inside a cage made of vines and lined with an orange energy field. The creature tried to teleport again and again, but could only reappear inside his prison, going nowhere. Hiro glanced a second time to find another vine cage next to the critter’s, one that didn’t have the glowing field like the former. “And… there’s someone else too.” He, along with everyone else, looked at the second occupied cage, spotting a human male sitting inside it. The male appeared to be rather young, likely in his late teens.

Hiro couldn’t get much from that fact other than knowing that a human was in trouble alongside the cute critter they came to rescue from the start. “Let’s get ‘em out!” He was about to take another step forward when Uzuki lifted an arm in front of him.

“ _Shh! Wait!_ ” she whispered fiercely to him. “ _Someone’s coming!_ ”

Coming through another doorway on the floor below, a tall imposing masculine figure was walking regally towards the two prisoners. He was dressed predominantly in dark blue and cyan, wearing a pale blue mask that had a pair of golden tusks attached to it. He had a dark blue loincloth attached on the central front of his belt and a single cloth of the same color attached behind the belt fluttered as he walked. He had a breastplate covering his chest that was also held together by cyan armored parts around his waist. Beneath his helmet was a pair of eyes of orange sclera surrounded by dark pink eyelids and long magenta hair hung out from below it, trailing just like his pseudo-cape. He also had two dark blue guard casings on his forearms and two little black-skinned and red-eyed imp-like gargoyles rested on both his shoulders.

Once he approached his two prisoners close enough, he stopped, standing in front of them wordlessly. The human guy locked in the cage next to the little teleporting animal felt the need to break the uncomfortable silence. “Um, sir?” he spoke up warily to be as polite as anyone in his city could be, “If you’re the one complaining about our _kushikatsu_ , fine then. It’s all chicken liver. But we didn’t skimp on the _yakiniku_!”

The tall blue sheep-like stranger wasn’t too impressed by the young human’s explanation, not even bothering to continue the topic. “I can assure you that I have no interest in your…scraps on sticks and yucky fingers.”

The human found himself shortly startled by one of the figure’s shoulder pad-gargoyles flying off the shoulder he rested on and dove right for the cage bars, landing and grabbing onto them and sticking his head in a little bit like a hungry falcon. The gargoyle with his single smooth beak took a turn to speak, on behalf of himself and his other gargoyle compatriot, “But we would like to know more about the chicken liver.”

His fellow gargoyle, one that had a skinny snout of serrated teeth, also swooped onto the cage with a devious chuckle, scaring the human again. “Hey Muninn,” he snickered, “Looks like this guy’s got the goods on chicken liver right here!”

“Come on, Huginn. You know a tasteless joke’s worse than any lazy human food,” the other one lightheartedly chastised.

Paying no further attention, the tall blue sheep-man turned to the forcefield-modified cage containing the dog-cat and stuck his arm in. The little creature tried to run, but the hand reaching after him reached his collar soon enough, taking hold of the little green vial between a finger and thumb and yanking it off the string.

“How nice of you to return my vial,” the sheep-man remarked with a tone of lorded superiority as he looked over the tiny container briefly in his hand. He turned to head to a control console that sat at the base of the central column, but gave an extra glance towards the human prisoner. “You’re about to become part of an experiment that may change the very nature of humanity.” The whole time he said that, he seemed rather intent.

Opening a small port in the console, he inserted the vial into it like a memory stick, the green fluid then draining from the vial into whatever laid beyond the console. A translucent tank that stood above the console and supported the rest of the column above began to fill up with a skittering cloud of luminescent green insects which appeared to be a cross between fireflies and mosquitoes. The green liquid taken from the vial earlier traveled up a time that wound around the tank to another segment on top, draining into what seemed to be like a convertor of sorts. A glowing green pustulant mass grew inside the convertor, sparks of electricity flying around as the process went on.

“ _This guy looks like trouble_ ,” Uzuki shivered quietly.

“ _Me too,_ ” Hiro whispered in agreement, “ _and if I learned anything from watching ‘Kunitsu Katsuro’ movies, it's that green stuff usually means something sketchy._ ”

The insects contained inside the glass tank flew up to where the glowing green mass was. Upon landing on its surface, they each inserted a proboscis into the thing’s surface and began to drink like a mosquito would, filling their abdomens with the same green fluid until they swelled slightly. The armored sheep-man released one of them out of the tank, coaxing it into perching itself onto his hand. He turned to head towards the cage holding his human prisoner. Without any verbal commands but a single wave of an arm, the vines composing the bars of the cage unfurled and wrapped around the guy’s limbs, pulling him upright until his feet hung just above the floor.

“So, is this, like, gonna hurt a lot?” the human asked, his casual tone not changing despite his current circumstance.

The sheep-man answered him curtly, “Yes, it will…if I'm doing it right.” He gently plucked the mutated insect from his hand with the other hand, extending and holding it out just inches from his captive. “By the way, what did you say your name was?”

“Kanji Irie, delivery guy at your service,” the guy answered nervously. “Why?”

“Oh, nothing. Just satisfying a need.” The sheep-man prodded the mosquito to fly towards the guy, waiting until it landed on his face. Without any other intervention, the mosquito stuck its proboscis into his skin, not letting up until its green-filled abdomen drained itself of the liquid it drank earlier. Once it finished pumping every last drop into the guy, it then flew off.

“Hey,” the guy named Kanji remarked with seeming relief, “that wasn't so ba–”

A visceral reaction retired inside his head, instantly making him feel his eyeballs popping out a little, accompanied by the sounds of bones cracking and tendons tearing. Painful twisting changes were happening all over his body, each one accompanied by him vocally expressing the obvious pain he felt behind them all. As if it weren't bad enough, the transformed areas that had shifted with such loud cracks and tears were rapidly beginning to liquefy.

Up above, the eyes of Uzuki and the turtles were glued to the scene, each one unnerved and repulsed but simultaneously drawn to the phenomenon with morbid curiosity.

“What is happening right now?” Hiro gaspingly whispered.

“That is just messed up,” Uzuki winced.

It didn't take long, though it felt like it went on for hours, but the guy’s transformation finally stopped. He was no longer the human he once was – now he looked more like a walking jellyfish, though he still kept his clothes on.

Uzuki, Hiro, Hoku, and Mon were aghast at this unnatural phenomenon, unsure what to make of a human undergoing such a forceful change to his own body. Basho, at the same time, made his observation. “Hmm, looks like _Echizen-kurage_ was the culprit after all.” His comment earned him disappointed stares from his brothers and Uzuki.

The delivery guy-turned-jellyfish still had a reaction that trumped the gang's. “ _NIKIBI NI NARETA BAKKARIYAKEDO, IMA KORE!?_ ” he cried before running out the front ground-level door screaming and flailing his tentacles, slithering and bouncing on the ground along the way.

The little gargoyle with the big beak snickered from his perch on his master's shoulder. “Should we go after him, _bosu_?”

The sheep-man paid the question no mind, instead focusing on the results of the human-jellyfish transformation. “ _Totsuzenhen'i wa nan-nen mo mae to on'naji yō ni umaikotodoshita,_ ” he quietly expressed his positive reaction to the results of his trial experiment.

Hiro’s eyes widened slightly at hearing those words. “Wait, did he say _totsuzenhen'i_? Mutation? As in, like us?”

Hiro, like his brothers, knew what he really was for all his life. He knew and understood what turtles around the world usually were: they were small, walked on all fours, and they never talked nor understood human speech. He knew that he and his brothers, despite being turtles too, were none of those things. For them to be the only turtles that were the way they were, it had to be… He gasped. “Could we be –”

“Part- _Echizen kurage_!?” Mon blurted in horror.

Everyone else would have seconded Mon’s realization if they hadn’t heard Basho’s scoffing laughter next to them. “Haha…” he said with sarcasm and amusement in his voice, but noted everyone looking at him with a pause, “…you are not kidding, are you?”

The sheep-man took a knowing glance at the dog-cat, which still glowered at him from inside the cage. “I’ll deal with you next after I’m done.” He walked away without any extra consideration.

Up above, Uzuki was crouched on her knees but planted her hands down with earnest resolution. “We can’t let that sheep-horn-weirdo do anything to the little guy!” she told the guys adamantly. The slightly wavering and pained tone in her voice told them she was just as scared at the thought of the cute critter undergoing the same painful and forceful transformation in just a little while.

Hoku was the first to turn a proverbial stone. “But how are we gonna do that? We don't have any weapons except for Basho.”

“Well, note to you: Next time, make your own weapons out of high-grade titanium,” Basho remarked indifferently, bouncing his staff on the palm of his hand.

Hiro stood up and got in front of everyone else. “Guys! Are weapons really all we got? We're ninjas. Hoku, you got your mad skills. Mon, nobody flips better than you. Basho, we wouldn't have gotten far without your big brain. As for me, I got –”

“– a friend who knows where to find a secret stash of weapons!” Uzuki finished for him, interrupting his little speech with a sideways slide that ended in her bouncing off his side a bit. In one hand, she already held a weapon of her own, one that was colored in a deep green and looked suspiciously similar to a golf club.

“ _Oh, thank goodness. We were so dead_ ,” Hoku whispered to Basho and Mon in relief.

Uzuki made her way over to a nearby lever that hung on the wall nearby. Pulling it, a trapdoor opened under the group, driving the four turtles to yell in fright from the sudden fall, though Uzuki remained confidently silent. Following the curvy chute was almost like traveling through the wormhole back on the surface all over again. As soon as they reached the end at the bottom, all four of them landed flat on their faces and piled over one another, only finished by Uzuki coming down after them and somersaulting over them all and landing on her feet upright.

The sight of this new towering chamber reignited the guys’ verbal awe and wonder once again, even when they already expressed it twice over a short while ago.

“It's like magic and science had a beautiful baby!” Basho offered his latest high praise to everything he saw.

Hoku and Mon were already going through the shelves of bladed and chained weapons like kids on Christmas morning, with the former finding himself an identical pair of katanas and the latter pulling out a different-looking pair of nunchakus. They would have been all set, except that Hiro called their attention towards another rather cooler detail.

“Hey guys, how about we get those glowy ones over there?” Hiro pointed to a rack of weapons that emitted auras of dim lights of differing colors that conveniently matched that of the turtles’ individual masks. The sight of them caused Hoku and Mon to look starry-eyed, dropping the weapons in their hands and skipping over to the magical weapon rack in long bounds.

“Dibs on the sword!” Hoku exclaimed in delight as he jumped up and grabbed the single blue-handled Ōdachi blade off the highest hooks. He took a celebratory swing to feel the sharpness of the sword zinging in the air. “Up swinging!” he tested out the blade in delight.

Mon grabbed the orange Kusari-fundo that hung on the next hook set, giving it a great big circular swing. The long chain-like cord curved around like a whip, the saw-laced orb at the end of it seemingly buzzing to life. “ _Hotto sūpu!_ ” he whooped with a bounce in his step.

Hiro settled for grabbing the pair of red-glowing wooden Tonfā. He clacked them together in a manner like a double-fist pump. “Boom baby!” he expressed his now supercharged mood.

Uzuki looked over to Basho who stood at the side examining something else. “What about you, Basho? Aren't you gonna grab a glowy weapon?” She held to him the purple-wrapped staff that had a hooked blade on one end and a chained mace on the other.

“Nah, I’m good,” Basho relaxingly declined. He cradled his current tech-packed titanium staff close to him, putting it against his cheek while rubbing it with his other free hand. “ _Te ~e hanasu ko tte wa zettaihen_ ,” he whispered tenderly to it. His eyes wandered to a little purple glowing crystal on a nearby stand, which prompted him to pick that up. “That looks interesting though.”

Hiro, Hoku, and Mon stood together in a superhero stance, the new magically-powered weapons in their hands giving them a new energy they felt to be stronger than they ever experienced. Uzuki thought the little spectacle was silly but so very much a true display of the friends she knew for years. Basho didn't react with much fanfare; after all, he lived with that kind of behavior all his life.

As usual, Hiro took charge of his newly armed brothers’ fighting spirit. “Let's go save the dog-cat!” Everyone else couldn't agree more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun Facts:  
> Basho's expression about a 'Hair-Comb Princess' is a reference to the Shinto rice goddess "Kushinada-hime" (クシナダヒメ, also 櫛名田比売 or 奇稲田姫)  
> Kushikatsu (串カツ), or Kushiage (串揚げ), is a dish involving deep-fried meat/seafood and vegetables on a skewer. It's a bit like shish-kebabs.  
> Yakiniku (焼き肉 or 焼肉) is a style of cooking where meat (usually beef) and vegetables are fried on a griddle in the center of a group table. It's based off the Korean-style barbecue. Not to be confused with hotpot.  
> Echizen-kurage (エチゼンクラゲ), or Nomura's jellyfish, is one of the largest species of jellyfish in the world. It's usually made into ice cream, though it's prepared carefully to remove all harmful components. Most other kinds of jellyfish are prepared as salad.
> 
> Dialect terms/phrases:  
> Osore-akushū o hikiokosahen (恐れ悪臭を引き起こさへん): "Don't trigger my fear-stink!" | Standard Japanese: Osore-akushū o hikiokosanai (恐れ悪臭を引き起こさない)  
> Baka kabe (バカ壁): "Stupid wall!"  
> Atarimaeyaro (当たり前やろ): "Why not?" (interjection) | Standard Japanese: Atarimaedesho (当たり前でしょ)  
> Kyanonbōru (キャノンボール): "Cannonball!"  
> Anzen'na chakuriku (安全な着陸): Safe landing  
> Kyōi-akushū (驚異悪臭): Wonder/amazement-stink  
> Min'na, kotchi kotchi (みんな、こっちこっち): "Guys/everyone, over here!"  
> Nikibi ni nareta bakkariyakedo, ima kore!? (にきびに慣れたばっかりやけど、今これ？): "I just got used to acne, but now this!?" | Standard Japanese: Nikibi ni nareta bakaridesuga, ima kore? (にきびに慣れたばかりですが、今これ？)  
> Bosu (ボス): boss  
> Hotto sūpu (ホットスープ): Hot soup  
> Te ~e hanasu ko tte wa zettaihen (手ぇ放すこってはぜったいへん): "I'll never let (you) go." | Standard Japanese: Tebanasu koto wa kesshite nai (手放すことは決してない)
> 
> ****Did you know that the sentence "Totsuzenhen'i wa nan-nen mo mae to on'naji yō ni umaikotodoshita" (突然変異はなん年も前とおんなじように上手いことどした) is NOT in the Osaka dialect? It's actually in the {{Kyoto Dialect!}} It means: "The mutation succeeded just like it did all those years ago."  
> [Standard Japanese: Totsuzenhen'i wa nan-nen mo mae to onajiyōni seikō shita (突然変異は何年も前と同じように成功した)]
> 
> ****There are two ways to call a person from Osaka (or the Kansai region) stupid:  
> One is "Aho" (阿呆), which is used casually or as a joke that's taken in stride - you're most likely to hear that in a regular local conversation.  
> The other is "Baka" (バカ), which is reserved SPECIFICALLY for people who've made SINCERELY unintelligent or unwise mistakes - being called "Baka" is a much bigger deal to a Kansai person than to a Standard speaker (Standard speakers use that term liberally for all manners and contexts).  
> If you want to stay on an Osakan's good side, stick with "Aho" and never use "Baka" unless you really have to.


	6. Shinpi-tekina Docha (Part 3)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **** This is the final part to the "Mystic Mayhem"-arc. I'll be back to individual stories after this point.

Back in the main lab area, things were slowly beginning to look grim for the little cat-dog. The little toothy gargoyle, known as Huginn by his other fellow gargoyle, was cackling to himself as he poked at the poor creature through the cage’s forcefield with a twig. His partner, whom he referred to as Muninn, watched the critter’s reactions and movements closely.

The gargoyles’ masked sheep-man master held one of his mutated ooze-filled mosquitoes on his right hand, letting it dance delicately over his dispassionately twiddling fingers. “Finally,” he mused to no one but himself as he watched the bug in admiration, “after all these years, I can continue my work.” If he was in a better mood, he would have smiled as he said that.

Not that it mattered, as his internal celebration was interrupted by a loud series of bangs and clangs coming from the corner of the chamber walls on his left. He turned to face the direction of the noise and, to his bewilderment, saw four turtles and a human girl rolling and tumbling out of a ventilation duct onto the second-level walkway above. The turtles landed flat on their faces on top of each other while the human girl landed on top of the pile in a sitting position, feeling cheery.

“ _Nan?_ ” the sheep-man exclaimed.

The five kids promptly got back on their feet, with Hiro taking a leader’s stance, with one hand on his side and the other pointed at the sheep-man himself. “Alright, you incredibly and unusually buff bookworm,” Hiro said, “give us the little guy and you’ll walk outta here with your horns still attached.”

“Shouldn’t we also stop him from creating _kurage-jin_?” Hoku interrupted his big brother’s attempt at an intimidating hero’s order.

Hiro thought for a moment. “Hmm, okay.” He then reassumed his hero pose and repeated himself. “Give us the little guy, stop creating _kurage-jin_ –”

Basho interrupted him with a side comment. “ _Echizen-kurage_ , Hiro.” Uzuki groaned loudly from the gratuitous correction. But Hiro took the advice as well.

“Okay! Stop creating _Echizen-kurage-jin_ , give us the little guy –”

As Hiro corrected and lengthened his hero’s demand, while Hiro’s words were being talked over by Mon suggesting a bunch of other small conditions to add to the red-masked turtle’s statement, while Basho gave more technical corrections, as Hoku expressed his amusement at what was happening, as Uzuki watched the whole thing without a remark…the sheep-man’s eyes lingered on the group, particularly on the turtles.

His eyes glistened as he admired how perfectly balanced each turtle’s physical proportions were, how they moved with such vigor and without adverse reaction, their level of intelligence showcased in how verbally coherent they presented themselves…he had found something truly wonderful.

“ _Erai utskushi osu_ ,” he whispered tenderly, like someone who found something that truly touched their heart and soul.

After watching his brothers go back and forth in trying to agree on how to go forward with the whole situation, Hoku decided it was enough. “Okay. Hiro, how about you just take it from the top?”

“Okay,” Hiro obliged, “First, you apologize to the cat-dog, then –”

“Let’s do this!” Uzuki shouted, taking a flying leap off the walkway and flying through the air on a downward angle in the direction of the cat-dog. “UUZUUKIIIII OONNIIISHHIIIII!!!!!”

Back at the top, the guys were instantly panicking like crazy. “ _Shinjirarehen!_ She just went all in!” Mon cried out in absolute disbelief.

To her credit, Uzuki managed to land right into the cat-dog’s cage and immediately started pulling on the vine bars. The vine bars stretched as she pulled hard in every direction, using both her hands and even her teeth. Too bad she didn’t notice the two imp-like gargoyles flying in the air behind her, leading to her getting snatched back up into the air by her jacket, the talons of the gargoyles’ feet having gotten a grab at her shoulders.

Seeing her get carried away by his gargoyles, the sheep-man turned his attention back to the turtles, flicking out a small purplish-pink orb in his palm and slamming it onto the floor of his lab. The orb flashed brightly to crack the floor open, a stream of neon-pink vines with purple veins sprouting up to shoot in the direction of the turtles. The vines whipped forward and struck into the upper level wall like spears, but the turtles were quick on their feet, jumping over the vines just as they struck and running down them like ninjas on a tightrope. Well, they ‘ran’ as far as trained ninjas went – Hiro and Basho consistently ran all the way down the vines and Mon slid down like a surfer while Hoku more or less rolled and tumbled backwards, sliding on all fours.

The sheep-man then flicked out three more of those same orbs between his fingers and tossed them at the floor again, throwing them further like a discus. When the orbs hatched something that emerged from the further-cracked floor yet again, it wasn’t simply a cluster of vines. The turtles found themselves facing a rapidly growing giant golem, one that appeared to be made of some kind of sandstone, its perfect thick curvatures only betrayed by its mismatched facial features. Gaps in its armor and limbs looked fleshy like the vines from earlier but the rest of it looked simplistic to the point that it could be taken for a robot.

“Whoa!” Basho exclaimed at the magnitude of the newly created foe.

“Oh my gosh!” Mon cried in similar surprise.

“ _Shinkendekka?_ ” Hiro yelled in disbelief.

“ _Uchi o mihende ~e!_ ” Hoku hollered at the giant creature without releasing any one of his limbs from the vine he was riding.

The giant golem grabbed the base of the vines that had sprouted out earlier and gave a violent yank, sending the vines whipping in another direction with the turtles moving atop being taken along for a ride with them. The vines were snapped up and down so that they rippled like a wave, sending the turtles hurdling down towards the stone floor with a meteoric crash. The guys were left lying on the shallow crack-filled semi-crater, shifting around on their shells or plastrons with a few groans.

They recovered in time to see the giant rocklike golem look down upon them with a drool-riddled roar. “ _Soreran hyōhon o tsuka maeru_!” the sheep-man commanded.

“Team, _ikuzo_!” Hiro yelled in turn, readying his new weapons while his brothers were spurred to do the same. Immediately, all for of them made a mad dash at this new enemy. As they ran at ninja-speed, they watched the giant get ready to punch.

Hoku sprinted until he was under the golem, getting down and sliding across the stone floor just as the giant landed its first punch. Taking his new sword, he swung it as hard as he could that he sliced the monster’s foot clean off its leg. The golem stumbled but recovered with another drooling roar. It went on to punch a fist into the floor and dig out a handful of giant-sized chunks of broken rock, then flinging them at the other turtles.

Hiro and Mon watched out for the oncoming rocks and leaped just as they landed, avoiding their crushing strikes with flips and slides. When they both reached a high enough point, Mon swung his Kusari-fundo to wrap its line around Hiro, then did another hard swing to launch him in the direction of the monster’s head, the chain unwinding to release the big snapping turtle.

“ _Hotto sūpu_!” yelled Hiro as he flew at the golem’s face and landed a devastating Tonfa punch on its stony cheek. To his surprise though, the golem didn't get knocked over or even budge, leaving him plastered front first on the monster’s head. The golem still stumbled again due to still missing its severed foot.

Basho got at a safe position at a distance from the golem and deployed the rockets on the jetpack he wore on his softshell. He ascended up into the air and activated his titanium staff, re-summoning a pair of twin rockets from both ends of it. When the rockets powered up and fired, the staff instantly spun at breakneck speed, though Basho was unfortunately not fast enough to prepare for the strike he wanted. “Oh no no no no no!!!!!” he exclaimed in panic when he felt his staff’s rocketing power take him into the spin with it. Spinning so fast, he ended up losing both his control and grip on the staff, unable to keep it from flying away in the same erratic runaway spinning from back on the surface a few hours ago. “Look out, guys!” he called out frantically.

The staff spun as it flew, stealing past his brothers and Uzuki until it made a beeline for the golem. It struck the golem in the head, and while it didn't appear to do anything at first, the rockets flared up again, powering up so hard that it flipped the golem over and kept it somersaulting in the air at least twice before slamming it back down hard. The impact was hard enough to take it down for good, judging by the loud crash and the ensuing wind and dust clouds that enveloped much of the chamber temporarily. The staff flew back to Basho like the boomerang he programmed it to be. “Okay, now that is a Hanshin maul,” Basho congratulated himself.

The sheep-man had initially shielded his eyes with one arm from the concussive blast of wind and dust, but didn't need to hold it long as everything quickly settled back down. He took a moment to reexamine the group of turtles now splayed across the piles of stony rubble left behind from the golem's fall.

“ _Gūzen inshō-teki_ ,” he marveled at the display, “Their techniques are a bit crude, but with adequate training, they can be as formidable as I hoped.”

At the same time, the guys didn't seem to exhibit the behavior that would warrant such words from their assailant. Hiro was splayed over a chunk of rock, his arms hugging the top as he let his tongue hang out from how tuckered out he was. Mon was lying flat on his shell on another rock, huffing, puffing, and panting as he took a similar breather. Hoku was sitting on the stone floor, hunched over while he coughed and sputtered from the remaining airborne dust. Basho seemed more composed than any of his brothers, having landed on his feet atop the fallen golem's shattered head and sat down, immediately taking out and scrolling through his phone.

Uzuki, meanwhile, was still wrestling with the two little flying gargoyles that continued to hold on to her. “It's okay!” she yelled to her friends from the height she was at currently. “I got this!”

Hoku was the first to recover from the intense workout and got right to his feet, facing the sheep-man. “Well, great to hear. Since you’re surrendering…”

The sheep-man only have a little scoffing laugh. “Draxum- _danshaku_ does not surrender.”

“Okay then,” Hoku improvised, “Why don’t you tell him that – oh, _wakatta_! You’re going with that whole ‘ _fukitsuna-san'ninshō_ ’-speech, aren’t you?”

Hiro jumped in. “Only Hiro can use the _san'ninshō_!” He readied himself in stance on all fours before springing forward in an upright sprint. “Okay, guys! Time to put our training to use!”

“What training? You guys have been training?” asked Hoku in a tone of absolute skepticism. He nonetheless joined his brothers as they all made a mad dash for the obvious bad guy in front of them.

The sheep-man, having identified himself with the name ‘ **Draxum- _danshaku_** ’, threw up a pair of small orbs that were dark-red in color and had the texture of a spiked fruit and grasped one in either hand. The small orbs cracked open to coat his hands and forearms in that same spiky shell, giving him the impression of natural gauntlets. He lowered himself slightly to prep a battle stance as the turtles dove at him from all sides.

Hiro tried to swipe a few Tonfa punches at him, but Draxum deflected them in quick succession and punched him away. Hoku tried to get in a few swings and slices while Mon attempted to snare him with the chain of his Kusari-fundo, but Draxum parried the strikes and avoided the coiling chain weapon with similar ease. When Basho ran at him for his turn, the other three turtles did a simultaneous pounce. But again, without even another word, Draxum lifted both of his fisted hands and slammed them onto the stone floor, creating a weblike and crack-filled crater beneath him and unleashing a shockwave of released wind that blew the turtles back a few feet, sending them sliding on the floor incapacitated.

Seeing the turtles lying down and writhing in pain a bit was satisfying enough for Draxum. He smirked, “And that is why Draxum- _danshaku_ never –”

*BONK*

Draxum’s mighty spiel was rudely interrupted by one of his little gargoyle minions falling onto him, colliding with the helmet on his head. He turned his attention to observe the downed gargoyle, turning out to be Muninn, trying to reorient himself.

“ _Kan'nin'ya de, bosu_ ,” Muninn groaned through the dizzying pain he was currently experiencing, which was all he could mutter before Uzuki came down hard on him yet again with an improvised battle cry. While she wailed on him with her golf club-weapon and stomping feet – even making him bounce on the floor a little, she also held Huginn between her teeth and shook her head around with the gargoyle swinging hard. She did stop to glance at the four turtles watching her and give a thumbs up, letting them know that she did handle her situation like she told them earlier. The guys reciprocated with another thumbs up as well.

Unfortunately, the moment didn’t last for long. While Uzuki got right back to kicking the two little gargoyles around, Draxum used his glove to shoot out a stream of dark green and vinelike organic matter at her, entrapping the girl in a pseudo-cocoon of weblike greenery that left her tumbling onto the floor. The guys immediately gathered around her in shock and concern before turning to Draxum with looks of sincere outrage.

“You did not just do that to our friend!” Mon was the first to make it known. Without any extra banter, he unwound his Kusari-fundo and flung the chained orb at the sheep-man. Draxum easily sidestepped the strike, dodging it, but it was when he looked behind to the orb that passed him that got everyone’s attention.

The orb was spinning like a buzzsaw in midair without falling nor moving anywhere else. Suddenly without any notice beforehand, the saw-ball set itself ablaze, the flames forming the likeness of eyes and mouth on a jack-o-lantern while emanating a maniacal laugh. Everyone blinked at what they saw Mon’s weapon become. “Whoa!” Mon marveled out loud, “Mystic weapon! Awes – AAAAAAHHH!!!!!!”

Mon was suddenly yanked forward by his apparently-living weapon zooming to the second-level wall across from everyone else, which bounced off upon collision to head another angle at breakneck speed. He yelped as he ricocheted off every part of the circular chamber, steadily going further and further upward until his magic weapon took a detour through the glowing green core that stood atop the central gadget-laden column that stood at the center of the chamber, the structure in which Draxum had used to perform his earlier experiment. At a high speed, Mon smashed into the glowing thing, causing it to generate abnormal amounts of electrical sparks before collapsing, its green hue changing to orange before exploding. Said explosion began triggering a series of other explosions to follow, but Mon was still too busy being pulled along in the tumultuous ride his weapon was giving him. When Mon finally headed straight down, he was aiming for Draxum below, but Draxum jumped out of the way in time for Mon to shoot smack dab into the stone floor again, bouncing a couple times after impact to land in a sitting position and finally come to a stop. At the same time, his weapon landed next to him and extinguished itself, seemingly reverting back to a normal weapon.

Mon, though slightly dazed and still in shock, looked to see his brothers and Uzuki sparklingly eyeballing him with eyepopping curiosity. “Whoa! Mon, _saikō yatta_!” Hiro pointed energetically. “How’d you do that?”

“ _Wakarahen_ ,” Mon shrugged, “I was just swinging my weapon like this, then all of a sudden…” His weapon flared up again, the fiery cackling face on the Kusari-fundo’s chained ball reappearing. Mon concluded, “…just like tha – AAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!” Just like before, the fiery laughing thing took off in another direction, carrying Mon away with it.

Just from watching Mon, Hiro was sure that if Mon grabbed a glowy weapon that turned out to have a magic power, then it should be the same with his own glowy Tonfas. “Look at that! Okay, let me try!” He waved his Tonfas in little circles, repeating the little movements in a sort of mock-incantation. “Come on,” he beckoned his twin wooden weapons, moving them to try and turn something on in them, “Magic weapon! Magic weapon! Magic weapon!” The Tonfas immediately flashed with a red aura, culminating in crimson electric sparks. “Yes!” he exclaimed in delight, poising his Tonfas to clack them together like his own fists, “Magic weap – OOOOO!!!”

The explosive energy released from Hiro clashing his fists together with his Tonfas was powerful enough to send him hurdling backwards into the wall behind him, hard enough that he smashed into said wall and flopped back down to the floor after impact. It left a crack-filled dent on the wall and Hiro himself sprawled upside down in a pained daze. At least Hiro wasn’t so loopy that he couldn’t talk. “ _Mo kinō suru wa_ ,” he managed to tell Hoku, Basho, and Uzuki in a muffled groan.

Hoku decided it was his turn, confidently turning to run at Draxum again with his sword readied by his side. “Can’t wait to find out what mine does!” he exclaimed, feeling blue sparks emerging and dancing around the blade. Once he felt the sword charged up enough, he got right up to Draxum and took a hard swing at him, while Draxum himself promptly lifted his armored forearms in defense. The swing of Hoku’s sword cut the air…but Draxum didn’t appear to be harmed.

Draxum wondered what just happened. Hoku was wondering as well, albeit looking sweatier and more nervous. They both looked up to see Hoku’s sword generating beams of blue light above, but then looked down to find a circle of similar energy opening up right below Hoku’s feet.

Hoku didn’t have any time to react to himself sinking down into the bluish-white circle below him, slowly at first but then immediately escalating into a rapid fall. “Whoa! Whoawhoawhoawhoa!!!!!” Hoku yelled as he flailed his limbs to try and stay afloat, though it proved to be in vain. He slipped down until he was completely below the circle’s surface, which apparently exhibited itself as some kind of portal. Another of the same portal opened up directly above the one Hoku once stood on. Hoku soon reappeared, dropping out of that portal but then falling straight back into the one on the ground. Then he came back through the top one and into the bottom one. Then the top again, the bottom again, the top, the bottom…Hoku seemed to repeat this fall of terminal velocity faster and faster each time. “Get! Me! Off! This! Ride!”

Draxum, along with the cat-dog in its cage behind him, watched the repeating spectacle wordlessly. Draum was too busy trying to decide on what he thought Hoku was doing to react to Basho casually sliding up next to him while leaning on his staff. “And that’s why I like trying the old-fashioned way,” Basho stated matter-of-fact, “with impossibly futuristic high-tech weaponry.”

Without further delay, Basho then flipped his staff and began his own series of strikes, prods, and swings at Draxum. Just like before, Draxum proved skilled at dodging the purple turtle’s first several attacks, even blocking and deflecting some of them. Basho alternated each strike with a spin of his staff, putting distance between himself and Draxum at some point to look for another opening. With the press of a button, Basho activated one end of his staff, making it unfold and recombine parts into what appeared to be a rocket-powered fist.

Draxum was in no mood to keep entertaining his foe, so he leaped to enact a jumping forward thrust, his left arm reshaping its magenta chitin from a clawed hand to a pointed lance. He made his strike, but Basho ducked in time to avoid it, leaving his adversary exposed to the incoming rocket hammer-fist. A hard hit with an audible clang sent the guy flying across the room, rolling and tumbling on the floor a bit before he then righted himself, digging a claw onto the floor to slow himself to a stop.

“ _Keikakudōri_!” Basho bragged loudly. He seized his chance, running and jumping at Draxum to land a finishing strike with his staff.

“ _Abuhen_!”

Basho didn’t get a chance to land his desired blow as he felt himself getting struck by another on his side. Specifically, that strike came from the flaming and cackling Kusari-fundo that was still currently flying around, pulling his little brother Mon for a high-speed ride around the room. What’s worse was that when they both skimmed the ground, they ended up rolling around to the point that they got entangled in the Kusari-fundo’s chain, balling them up together as though they were in a net. They still kept rolling.

Draxum recovered himself, massaging his sore chin, to look upon a new variation of the ridiculous sights he had witnessed the turtles showing beforehand. “You fight like untrained buffoons!” he hissed in disgust.

Mon and Basho were still stuck together rolling around the room. Hiro was still lying in the same spot under the dent on the wall he made. Uzuki was still trying to pry off her organic restraints with her teeth. Hoku still remained stuck between the two vertically placed portals he accidentally made while in terminal velocity.

Draxum manipulated his chitin claws to form more of the same bioorganic matter he used to trap Uzuki. “But under me,” he continued, “you can become true warriors!” With that said, he shot three globs of sludge, trapping Hiro and Hoku in greenish cocoons just like with Uzuki and also Basho and Mon together in one.

Mon turned his eyes to Basho, who exchanged a similar look to him. “We don’t spend enough quality time together,” Mon told his older brother affectionately, even rubbing a cheek against his.

“Oh, please not now, Mon,” Basho objected non-energetically.

“How are we gonna save the cat-dog now?” Uzuki exclaimed to Basho, the worry in her voice having returned louder than ever.

“Basho’s got it,” Basho answered her, flicking his head to slip the pair of goggles he wore over his eyes. Through the goggles’ enhanced data-displaying vision, Basho scanned and pinpointed the core that sat atop the lab’s central pillar sparking more intensely, going into overload. A warning icon flashed in the goggles’ field-of-view. “ _Isshun matte_!” Basho gasped, letting out a tiny sound of fright from his mouth.

Draxum took a step closer to the guys, finally getting his own chance to talk. Holding up a hand that closed into a fist for extra expression, he seemed unaware of the current meltdown happening behind him. “Turtles, why are you trying to stop my plan? _Uchi-ra wa min'na issho ni kore ni imasu_!”

Basho figured now was as good a time as any to stay on topic. “Uh, I don’t know if this is part of your plan, but…THE LAB’S ABOUT TO EXPLODE!!!” He and Mon were now jumping and wriggling around in the bindings they were trapped together in, yelling in fright and desperation as they flailed like jumping beans in an amateur attempt to escape their situation. The same could be said for Hiro, Hoku, and Uzuki as they repeated Basho and Mon’s actions in their own bindings.

Draxum finally turned around and looked up to see the core atop his lab overloading, shortly culminating in it exploding, followed by more explosions that trailed down the rest of the central pillar until it got closer to the ground where he was. The ensuing explosions also blew bits of the walls and ceiling to pieces, sending giant-sized chunks of rubble falling straight down like meteorites. “Aw nuts,” he muttered. A bunch of debris slammed on top of him, burying him underneath a noticeably tall pile of giant rocks.

The central pillar, the one structure that functioned as the sole machine that enabled Draxum’s experiments, tilted drastically and split in half, releasing the glowing green mutant mosquitoes once contained within its now-shattered tank segment. The cat-dog creature was still stuck in its cage, curled up and bracing itself from the frightening collapse around it. Then with wide eyes, it narrowly managed to avoid a falling beam that slammed on top of its cage, denting the vine bars and deactivating the forcefield accompanying them. Seeing the latter happening was the perfect opportunity for the critter to finally teleport itself out of its cage, freeing itself at last.

Everyone was still panicking like crazy until Uzuki noticed the cat-dog teleporting right in front of her and gently landing onto her lap. “ _Chibi-tan_!” she gently exclaimed in elation and relief, taking note of the cat-dog lying spread out on its belly in a relaxed mood over her lap. While the sight was adorable and comforting, Uzuki could think of a better time for that. She beckoned to the creature. “Can you do your thing and get us out of here?” The cat-dog nodded with a smile, obliging with repeating its teleportation magic by surrounding its signature luminous blue aura around both itself and the rest of the gang. With a single flash, all six were teleported – out of their bindings, to boot – and out of the building, just in time for more rubble to come crashing down on where they used to be.

By some stroke of luck, the cat-dog teleported them back to the spot the turtles landed upon first arriving at the ‘mystic hidden city’ as Uzuki called it, a good distance that was more than far enough away from the now self-destructing lab. Wasting no time, Mon took out the magical trinket and redrew the same glowing M-sigil that got everyone here to begin with. In the same second that the portal opened, everyone jumped through, enabling it to close just as the lab’s distant explosions spread to their position.

At the other side of the portal, all five kids flew right out and landed on sand, finding themselves back in the baseball field of Matsushima Park. Everyone seemed a bit dazed from the impact, in which their weapons slid across the sand briefly. Mon regained his senses to see the little M-trinket that was key to their escape rolling across the sand as well, only dropping on its flat side like a coin a few inches away from him. The trinket looked fine at first…until its cap suddenly sprang off, revealing a little spring attached underneath, while a few smaller bits and pieces of glass broke off too.

“ _Shimouta_ ,” Mon lamented, “dad’s trinket broke!”

Everyone else got back on their feet without any worse for wear. Uzuki arched her back to stretch her muscles as they felt a little sore from all the exertions she had to go through. But in no time at all, she found the cat-dog teleporting right above her, letting itself fall as she quickly lifted her hands to catch the little critter.

Uzuki felt the greatest sense of relief she ever had the entire night, immediately cuddling the magic animal in her embrace while giving it the biggest and tenderest smile she could sincerely make. “Aw,” she cooed to it, “Are you okay there, boy…or girl?” She spared a glance to the guys standing behind her who looked just as relieved. “ _Jibun wa tashika ni sono zuenbu no dogachaga o tōshite odayaka yatta_.” Her eyes suddenly lit up. “Hey, I think I know what to call you! ‘ _Dogachaga_!’ That should be perfect for you!”

“Hm, I dunno. It kinda sounds too long,” Mon commented while taking a close gander at the cat-dog himself. “Think you got an easier name for the little guy?”

Uzuki paused. “Well, I still think _dogachaga_ fits the best, so…” Her face lit up once she figured it out. “Okay, how about ‘ _Docha_ ’? Short enough, but close enough to the meaning, right?” She turned to look the critter in the eyes. “What about it?”

The cat-dog answered her by bumping and rubbing its head against her cheek. “Alright then,” Uzuki concluded cheerily, “ **Docha** , it is.”

“Guys! We just defeated a boss villain,” Hiro pointed out, taking charge of the group once again. “We’re heroes! We deserve a name, like: Mad Dogs!”

“Mad Dogs?” Hoku hesitantly questioned, “shouldn’t it, maybe, be something like: Ninja Mutant Turtle Teens, or…I don’t know. Keep brainstorming.”

The group didn’t get long to do that further brainstorming though, as their eyes were caught by the sight of a lone green-glowing mutant mosquito drifting next to them and then away towards the city streets. “Huh?” they all collectively remarked. They were caught off guard by a massive cloud of those same mosquitoes flying out of the portal behind them and taking off into the dawning sky, going so fast that it generated a breeze. When the gang recomposed themselves, they saw the insects streaking in clusters, splitting off into several groups and flying off into the rest of the city in all directions.

“Well uh, this can’t be good,” Basho tensed, his eyes narrowing in a wincing expression at the sight and knowing the implications of what he just saw. Everyone seemed to agree, wearing expressions on their faces that showed that they were just as nervous.

“ _We should really go. I think I can hear people’s bikes rolling around the corner_ ,” Hoku said quietly to the group. Without further prodding, everyone hurriedly ran out of the baseball field, hoping to get out of sight before anyone notices them or what happened because of them.

The work of heroes had just begun, and it already wasn’t going to be an easy start. There definitely was mayhem coming for them all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ‘Mayhem’ finally got his name, yay! Here, it’s “Docha,” named after the Kansai term ‘dogachaga’ (you’ll find the definition below). Hope the chapter title makes more sense to you now!
> 
> Also introducing ‘Baron Draxum,’ or as he refers to himself in Japanese: “Draxum-danshaku” (recall the rule about name and title order back in Chapter 3). Remember back in the last chapter when he spoke a sentence in the Kyoto Dialect? That’s because Draxum is a Kyoto-speaker in this story, setting him apart from the heroes who are Osaka natives. One character detail, simple but makes quite a difference…  
> ________________________________________  
> Kyoto dialect phrases Draxum spoke:
> 
> Nan? (なん？): “What?” | Standard: Nani? (何？)  
> Erai utsukushi osu (えらい美しおす): “It’s so beautiful” | Standard: Totemo utsukushīdesu (とても美しいです)  
> Soreran hyōhon o tsuka maeru (それらん標本をツカまえる): “Capture those specimens” | Standard: Sorera no hyōhon o toraeru (それらの標本を捕らえる)  
> Uchi-ra wa min'na issho ni kore ni imasu (うちらはみんな一緒にこれにいます): “We’re all in this together” | Standard: Watashitachi wa min'na issho ni kore ni imasu (私たちはみんな一緒にこれにいます)  
> ________________________________________  
> Osaka terms/phrases:
> 
> Shinjirarehen (信じられへん): “I can’t believe it!” | Standard: Shinjirarenai (信じられない)  
> Shinkendekka (真剣でっか): “Are you serious?” | Standard: Shinkendesuka (真剣ですか)  
> Uchi o mihende ~e (うちを見へんでぇ): “Don’t look at me!” | Standard: Watashi o minaide (私を見ないで)  
> Kan'nin ya de (カンニンやで): “I’m sorry” | Standard: Gomen'nasai (ごめんなさい)  
> Saikō yatta (最高やった): “That was awesome!” | Standard: Saikōdeshita (最高でした)  
> Mo kinō suru wa (も機能するわ): “It also works” | Standard: Mo kinō shimasu (も機能します)  
> Abuhen (危へん): “Watch out!” | Standard: Abunai (危ない)  
> Jibun wa tashika ni sono zuenbu no dogachaga o tōshite odayaka yatta (自分は確かにそのずえんぶのどがちゃがを通して穏やかやった): “You sure were calm through all that mayhem” | Standard: Anata wa tashika ni sono subete no konran o tōshite odayakadeshita (あなたは確かにそのすべての混乱を通して穏やかでした)  
> Dogachaga (どがちゃが): chaos, complete disarray, turmoil, mayhem | Multiple related terms in Standard Japanese apply here  
> ________________________________________  
> Other terms/phrases (mainly Standard):
> 
> Kurage-jin (クラゲ人): Jellyfish-people  
> Ikuzo (行くぞ): “Let’s go!”  
> Gūzen inshō-teki (偶然印象的): Accidentally impressive/Impressive by chance  
> Danshaku (男爵): baron  
> Wakatta (わかった): “I get it now”  
> Fukitsuna (不吉な): sinister, ominous  
> San'ninshō (三人称): third-person  
> Keikakudōri (計画通り): “Just as planned”  
> Isshun matte (一瞬待って): “Hold on a minute”  
> Chibi (ちび): little guy/little one  
> -tan (たん): an honorific that serves the same purpose as “-chan”, except that it sounds cuter or more affectionate; think of it as “-chan” pronounced in baby-talk and being overall cutesier


	7. Ronbun Trails

Down in the sewers of Osaka, the turtles fidgeted and paced around in the living room of their home. It hadn’t been long since the city got infested by mutated mosquitoes and left a mess for the guys to clean up. But without any leads on how to find these bugs, it was unanimously decided that it was better to start off small.

“Okay guys,” Hiro rounded the guys together, “As new heroes, we gotta find real trouble to take care of. What do we know?”

Basho, as usual, was preoccupied with scrolling through his phone. “Well, I know that it's much too early to be calling ourselves that…” He took a moment to give his brother a side glance, “…especially as we 'heroes' are the ones behind that mess anyway.”

Hiro gulped. “Y-y-yeah! That's why we’re trying to find stuff for…cleanup practice! Gotta get those cleaner-skills up, right?”

“Well, I think looking around town for problems to solve is an easy enough start,” Mon chipped in. He happened to be doodling a new drawing on paper on the living room floor as he talked. “I think it’d be fun to get another real adventure too!”

“Yeah, that's the spirit!” Hiro smiled. He lightly smacked a fist into an open palm. “Okay. We better get to it then. First step, we go out into the city and look for those mosquitoes. Next step, we check if those mosquitoes stung and mutated anyone yet. Step number 3, we fight down anyone who is mutated, snatch one of those mosquitoes for Basho to study, then make a cure along with some other stuff.”

Hiro's three younger brothers blinked wordlessly. “How about we just stick with regular local trouble?” Hoku spoke up. “You know, the whole 'hometown neighborhood hero starting off small'-thing you mentioned earlier?”

Hiro paused. While he wanted to get right to the mosquito problem now, he had no idea how to go about locating it, let alone solving it. The bugs were small and spread out, not to mention that there was so much ground to cover. Osaka may not be as big as the capital city, but it was still big enough to get lost in. And he was expecting for those bugs to have mutated at least a few people already, so what else could he do? “Okay then,” he conceded, “Where do we start looking for little town troubles?”

“The first and foremost source, my fellows,” Basho interjected, holding up a tablet for everyone else to see, “the Internet.” The other three brothers gathered around him while he got right to pulling up pages of several news websites. They all gave their input as they scrolled down article after article.

So far, it was a steady stream of 'no’s’ and 'too something’s’ as the list steadily got shorter and narrowed down, with even the occasional joking jabs at some of the most ridiculously trivial. Very soon, they were out of incidents to choose. It was even the same with several other news websites, much to their chagrin.

“ _On, saya!_ ” Hiro complained. “Not a single one of these real town troubles look troubling enough to deal with!” He was practically rubbing his noggin sore.

“Told you real life is boring,” said a deadpanned Basho who went back to checking his phone for updates.

Hoku, however, wasn’t so nihilistic. “No need to sweat it. If you can't find adventures in the real, check for them in the unreal.”

Hearing such a confusingly cryptic statement made the snapping turtle perk his head up. “Huh? What's that mean?”

“Hoku, we’re supposed to be looking for 'real' problems to fix,” Basho reminded his younger brother, “not make up more problems for everyone else.”

“Noooo,” Hoku dismissively refuted while taking out his own phone, “I mean, why don't we check out this website?” He held up his phone that was displaying a webpage for his brothers to see. Said webpage was host to a list of rumors and urban legends documented across Japan, uploaded from all kinds of sources. “I think here's where we found our goldmine.”

Everyone carefully examined what Hoku presented on his phone. “M-hmm,” Hiro slowly nodded, “and how are a bunch of high school tall tales gonna get us started on hero work?”

“ _Yuu teru dake ~e,_ ” Hoku shrugged his shoulders, “If you’re not up to solving real life problems, this can't be any worse.” Without giving his big brother time to object, he went right to scrolling through the list shown on the website to look for ones happening in Osaka. After a bit of time, he stopped, keeping a finger placed on one entry in particular. “This one looks promising.”

The guys gathered around to read the entry:

_From what could be understood from it, there is a rumor going around about a gang of ninjas skittering about in **Nishinari ward** , committing burglaries against small bookstores and donation centers involving books, additionally causing headaches for the ward’s local yakuza groups. By the time the guys were reading the article, those ninjas had already stolen from almost every small business in the ward in just five nights, and it's said that they are doing this at such a breakneck speed that's proven humanly impossible._

“Sounds freaky,” Hiro commented, now intrigued. “But are we sure we wanna be running around the streets looking for fairy tale stuff? I'm not a fan of tuckering myself out over nothing.”

“Look, would you rather keep arguing about what small-time mischief to bust all night or just do something that at least sounds fun?” Hoku reasoned. Hiro thought about it quietly.

“Please?” Mon hopped while begging with his hands on Hiro's shoulder.

“Well, if my selections aren't good enough for the average hyperactive sensibilities, let's have a night out then,” Basho sighed.

Hiro thought long and hard and eventually came to a decision…

* * *

“Here they come, guys! Let's jump 'em!”

Hidden in the shadows on a rooftop in Nishinari ward's **Senbon-Kita** area, the guys carefully waited for the right moment when their targets would walk right into their trap. It was a rough start, but they were sure their team coordination was a lot better this time.

_Initially, they had first located those very ninjas in Nishinari ward’s **Senbon-Minami** area, quietly reacting with awe at the fact that this rumor turned out to be true. Hoku certainly felt more confident at the validation of the website he chose and recommended._

_“Well? What’d I say about this?” Hoku bragged to Basho next to him, a grin on his face and his eye ridges wiggling._

_“Okay, so the confirmation or deniability of a rumor has some credence, but it was still a fifty-fifty anyway!” Basho rolled his own eyes. His only response from Hoku was a hand lifted to him with fingers rubbing themselves, asking him for his fifty._

_As the team leader, Hiro directed the others to sneak up on the rogue ninjas and ambush them in the middle of their current latest theft, positioning themselves between two buildings to get the drop on them. Apart from the ones clad in body-covering garb, there were two members who stood out among the rest. One was of average height and had a lean build while the other was a head taller and appeared incredibly muscular, hulking even. Other than those details, they shared similar traits like being shirtless, baldheaded, wearing only baggy magenta pants, and had a footprint-like tattoo on their faces culminating in literal flames atop their scalps. Some of the guys couldn't help but point out these unusual features, however comically they expressed their curiosity._

_After a bit of waiting, the turtles did try and get the drop on these ninjas, but it was more like they just dropped clumsily to the concrete below. Even before the mysterious thieving ninjas took off from the alert, the turtles were in too much of a tangled mess to even start fighting. The realization of the gravity of their failure sank in once they got back on their feet._

_Fortunately, Hoku was the optimistic one that night, taking a moment to cheer up his brothers and remind them of the other ways they were still better at when it came to being their own ninja selves. Granted, the three didn't regain their chipper mood right away, but it didn't keep Hoku from devising a plan of his own in the absence of Hiro's planning. After some time and a great deal of salami later, the guys managed to set up a makeshift store made of pieces of cardboard and an empty alleyway. All that was left to do now was wait._

As they hid and waited, their senses were alerted to the sound of footsteps approaching. The ‘door’ of their cardboard storefront wall opened, revealing a familiar person they knew very well.

“Hi,” the girl greeted the guys, “I’m here to apply for…” She blinked. The guys blinked.

“Uzuki!?” all four of the turtles exclaimed.

Uzuki smiled, letting out a sigh of surprise and put her hands on her hips. “Of course, it had to be you guys! I had a nagging question about who does hiring sessions after dark.” The guys had nothing to say in their defense, opting just to confirm her affirmation with toothy grins and tiny handwaves.

In a moment of serendipity, everyone was now alerted to the sounds of more footsteps approaching. The guys immediately got to cover behind their hiding places, with the exception of Uzuki who still stood in the open. At the very least, Mon took a moment to fill her in with just part of him poking out of his hiding place.

“Uzuki, you’re hired,” he said to her while handing her a little slip of paper detailing some hand-scrawled notes. “Here are the instructions. Just follow the greeting and remember that the customer’s always right.” Without further waiting for Uzuki to ask him any questions, he ducked back into his hiding spot. Uzuki nervously stood as she watched herself being approached by a couple of unconventionally looking customers.

“ _O bandesu, ‘Hokū no Antīku-Magajīn’ e yau koso,_” Uzuki greeted the two men who slowly walked towards her as she tried to carefully read Mon’s little script, the difficulty compounded only by Mon’s rather chicken-scratched handwriting, “ _koko de ~eha, saishin-no-goshippu o hanbai shi, kasutamu-no-goshippu-komisshon o insatsu suru wa_ …MMMPHHMMPH!”

“ _What!?_ ” Mon whispered with a screech, “ _That’s not what I put in the script! What does ‘MMMPHHMMPH’ even mean?_ ” By the time all four brothers decided to spring their ambush now, the perps were gone and so was all their salami, with Uzuki lying on the cement ground of the alley, tied up to the max. He looked through the window of their cardboard storefront to see their targets driving off. “They’re getting away!”

Seeing the baddies they were supposed to nab get away yet again would have put another greater dent in their confidence, but this time, it was Basho’s turn to save everyone’s morale. “No worries, everyone. Thanks to my own genius intuition, I installed a tracking device in the stuff they stole.” He pressed a button on the high-tech brace on his forearm to activate said tracker, which began blinking and beeping inside Hiro’s gut – Hiro didn’t look sorry in the slightest for taking bites out of the salami earlier. “Luckily, I put another tracker in another package we made,” Basho salvaged, reconfiguring his gadgets to track that one. With an exchanging of nods, the guys moved out to follow where the perps were going.

“Hey guys! You mind getting me out of this bind first?” Uzuki called. The guys went right back.

* * *

After quite a bit of time following Basho’s tracker, the gang eventually wound up in **Taisho ward** , having finally chased down the bad guys to a harbor-front in the **Itchōme** area of **Kobayashi-Nishi**. Just from poking their heads around the corner of an empty coffee shack, they could make out more of the dark-garbed ninjas moving some boxes of stuff into an empty warehouse.

“ _I wonder what they’re hoarding all this stuff for?_ ” Uzuki whispered.

“ _Well, with their masked looks, you’d think they’re hunkering down for something,_ ” Hoku quietly suggested.

“ _Oh yeah, ‘hunkering down’, Hoku?_ ” Basho jibed, “ _You would think that’s the case, or rather, you know it._ ”

The way Basho suggested it made Hoku get on the defensive. “ _Hey! That’s just as much a normal mutant thing as it is a human one!_ ”

Uzuki felt the need to butt in. “ _As the only human here, I can tell you I support that._ ” Her statement was not only replied to with a smug smile from Hoku but also a hyper-enthusiastic nod from Mon too.

“ _Okay guys, here’s our window_ ,” Hiro whispered. The five waited until the ninjas lifting things had their backs turned to the group, then hopped from one stacked pile of boxes to the next until they got close enough to the warehouse’s front opening. Creeping around the corner to the box pile they hid behind, they could make out the two from before, apparently the leaders, doing something inside the warehouse, judging by what they saw from the shadows on the dimly lit walls. On Hiro’s mark, everyone moved forward, and they would have gotten into the warehouse without a fuss if it weren’t for Hiro accidentally bumping into a crate. The crate jostled but didn’t fall. However, it did cause a ninja standing on top of it to fall over, right in front of the group.

The group had to act fast to prevent being discovered, mainly by grabbing the downed ninja and trying to knock him out. Once that was dealt with, the group then finally made their way inside. They immediately jumped up to the rafters of the warehouse in order to spy on what the two weirdos down below were doing without being seen. Looking down directly upon the pair, they saw what they were doing.

The two guys appeared to be sifting through a bunch of papers, a good number of them being books and even interspersed with a few scrolls in between. They looked like they were rather deep in whatever they were reading. Even though it was a little risky for their stealth, the guys couldn't help giggle at how petty these thieves turned out to be.

“ _Really?_ ” Mon tried to stay quiet, “ _We got a gang of ninjas stealing books just for reading?_ ”

“ _Okay team, we finally got 'em cornered_ ,” Hiro got back on track, “ _now let's nab 'em for good this time!_ ” On his mark, the five leapt right of the rafters and touched down on the warehouse floor, standing right behind the two flaming baldheads.

“Hold it right there, book-snatching flame-heads!” Hiro called out on his signature confrontation language, prompting the two baddies to turn around, “You've been robbing our beloved writers and bookworms blind long enough!”

“Yeah, what he said!” Hoku added. “It's five against two, Mr. Skinny and…Mr. Unusually-Wide-Bodybuilder…so why don't you just 'paper-cut' your losses while you're still standing?” Hearing what he said, Hiro simply stared at him, Uzuki and Mon facepalmed, and Basho lightly bonked his head against his own staff.

The two guys were at least gracious enough to not comment on the pun. “You!” the big guy fired back in a low ape-like voice, “I'm going to fold you into knots!”

“Ooohh, that sounds inspired,” his smaller and thinner partner praised him in a voice that sounded faint and raspy. He turned to look at the gang with a raised pointed finger, “We’re both going to fold you into knots!” He watched as his larger partner then blew through a finger and a thumb to let out a loud high-pitched whistle, instantly prompting the gang to turn and look in all directions as they were instantly surrounded by the fully-dressed ninjas approaching them from outside.

“This is it, guys!” Uzuki said, readying a pipe in her hand, “Let's get hero-ing!”

All the five kids scattered, going after a few of these ninjas on their own. They mostly jumped and threw his with their weapons, knocking the ninjas away at best, but the ninjas didn't quite seem to let up in return. In fact, they looked like they were trying to land harder hits to the point of sizeable injury.

“Okay, that's it!” Hiro growled, poising his Tonfas, “ _Rafu ni purē shitai nen ka? Honma no rafu ninja o o mise suru wa!_ ” Clenching a fist around one of his blunt wooden weapons, he charged and with a Tonfa raised high, threw a red-glowing punch right into one ninja's guy. He expected the ninja to fall to the ground and roll a bit before keeling over, but to his shock, the ninja suddenly burst into little pieces of thin scraps that drifted in the air.

“Hiro, did you just…” Mon gasped. Hiro felt a little mortified too, unable to stop himself from swiping away at some of those particles drifting down onto his face. But he fortunately calmed down once he recognized the taste and texture.

“Guys!” he notified the others. “It's just confetti! They're completely harmless!” He saw as his brothers and Uzuki had a double-take, then striking harder at the enemy ninjas, making them explode into confetti as well. In all honesty, they all seemed to feel better about what they were doing now. After several minutes of running, jumping, and seizing every opening to land their hardest hits, every ninja was reduced to fluttering bits of paper, boosting the turtles’ confidence greatly.

Hiro turned his attention back to the now-lone pair of baddies. “Alright, clowns! You're out of play-cronies now! And if you don't wanna have a couple extra feet on your faces, you better tell us what you're doing with those books!”

The two guys said nothing, but grins slowly crept on their faces as they looked at each other. “ _Korera no henjin ni betsu no dageki o ataetai dekka?_ ” the skinny raspy guy said first.

The bigger man gestured politely, “ _Tokuina ko tte o karera ni misete miya_. All those books tell us nothing anyway.”

The skinny man reached over and grabbed a page from a nearby open book, tearing it off while ignoring the gang’s indignant gasps. With a fiddle of his fingers, he folded the page until it stood in his hand as a sort of miniature humanoid figurine, a product of origami.

“You’re going at us with arts and crafts?” Mon loudly asked in confusion. Everyone else said nothing but mirrored his confusion.

The skinny man said nothing but maintained his devilish grin. With a little heave, he flung the little origami figure at the group, which inexplicably engulfed itself in a puff of colorfully-lot smoke. Without giving time for the smoke to fully clear, a ninja leapt out of the cloud, a new one that looked exactly like the ones the gang had just fought and dispatched a minute ago. While the newly created ninja, apparently made from a piece of paper, dashed at the group and proceeded to fight, the skinny man used the distraction to take several more sheets of paper and do the exact same thing. In under a minute, the gang was back to where they started.

At the same time when this happened, everyone was a little taken aback at the revelation that none of the ninjas they fought were real, that the two flaming baldheads were working alone the whole time.

“Have these guys been made of paper the whole time?” Hiro was able to utter before he got a roundhouse kick to the face by another new paper ninja.

“Let's just fight these guys first and save the curious amazement for later!” Basho loudly reminded Hiro and the others while fending off a few more with his staff.

Even with their lack of hesitation in shredding these goons, they just didn't seem to be in short supply. “We're not gonna get anywhere at this rate!” Uzuki let everyone know as she observed more paper ninjas replacing the ones she just bludgeoned to pieces with her pipe. “We gotta take out the source!”

“I'm on it!” Hoku responded first. He readied his Odachi and sprinted at the two bad guys fast enough in the hopes they wouldn’t have enough time to make and throw more paper ninjas at him. Once he got close enough, he took a swing, but the big muscleman blocked the slider’s strike with a weapon of his own. Hoku grunted a bit as he struggled against the guy’s rather strong pushback. “ _Jibun wa sugure toru tte omoude ka?_ ” he tried to taunt.

“ _Hai, seya na_ ,” the hulking man answered bluntly. He shoved Hoku back with nary a breaking of sweat, prompting the turtle to try and counter him with a kick. But he didn’t move fast enough, as the big man caught the turtle’s foot in his hand and after grabbing his ankle, threw him into the tall book pile they had originally made behind him and his partner. Hoku fell and slid down on his shell, dazed.

“Hoku!” everyone else yelled. They would have immediately run over to Hoku to help him up, but they were too preoccupied with taking down the continuous waves of new batches of ninjas the two bad guys, particularly the slender baldhead, threw at them. It was a good thing that the gang were well-versed in being quick on their feet as they swatted away every ninja their way as quick as they could. But then, as they ran to Hoku, the two flaming baldheads had yet another trick up their sleeves.

With extra waves of his arms, the thin baldhead commanded hundreds of paper sheets to swirl around himself and his partner, the paper traveling together so fast in a vortex that they gathered and bunched up around one another. Every bit of paper joined together to form masses very similar to parts of a body, with even those masses joining each other to form a bigger and more familiar shape.

The gang actually stopped running to gaze up at the construct standing in front of them. Once the air in the warehouse had settled, they found themselves confronted by a giant-sized version of the paper ninjas they had been fighting, only differentiated by its size, musculature, and the textures of multiple sheets of paper all over its body instead of the solid garb. None of them could help letting out an audible gasp. Disregarding their reactions, the giant was commanded by its creator to lean down and grab Hoku, encircling the turtle in its hand and slowly squeezing him until he began crying out in pain. Seeing his distress made the rest of his pals try even harder to rescue him.

“Okay, that’s it!” Hiro growled from seeing his brother being hurt by the two tools he saw in front of him. He turned to address the people on either side of him. “Time to start _‘Operation Bro-Saver’_ on the double!” Basho, Mon, and Uzuki nodded in fierce agreement, feeling the exact same synergy at that moment. “Basho, Uzuki, you get that big waste of paper from the back. Mon and I’ll take him up front!” There was no reason for anyone to argue this plan out.

Basho flew around using his jetpack to drift in the air, with Uzuki riding on top. They swooped behind the giant perfectly, going upwards in the direction of where Hoku was currently being held and squeezed. With a look through his specialized goggles, Basho pinpointed that Hoku was in the grip of the giant’s left hand. Signaling silently to Uzuki, he watched the girl stand on her two feet atop his battle shell, holding her pipe while she tensed her leg muscles in a ready stance that meant she was going for a jump.

Hiro got ready to charge and throw a few punches while Mon was planning another kind of trick involving his Kusari-fundo. Readying the energy in his Tonfas, Hiro ran towards the giant and clacked his Tonfas together to give him more speed. Mon, as he ran, spun the chain of his Kusari-fundo and kept a close eye on the giant’s legs. Hiro continually upped his speed with Tonfa-energy and with a charged punch, smashed through one of the giant’s legs. Seizing the moment of seeing the giant stumble from Hiro’s strike, Mon whipped his weapon’s chain to wrap around the remaining leg and pulled, knocking that leg off balance. The giant fell to its knees and caught itself from falling further by placing its hands on the warehouse floor, disregarding Hoku who panicked from the sudden drop from his place in the giant’s grip.

It wasn’t very convenient for Basho and Uzuki, however. It so happened that at the same time Hiro and Mon disabled the giant’s legs, Uzuki had just leapt off Basho’s back in order to perform a dive save in Hoku’s direction. She free-fell through the air, all four of her limbs spread out in all directions like a whole-body parachute suit – the kind that looks like a flying squirrel – and aimed for Hoku while giving her signature “UZUKI ONISHI”-battle cry…and she still went that way even when the giant lurched forward out of her field-of-view, with Hoku going along with it. Uzuki was a fortunate girl to have Basho swoop in and catch her at the first second of witnessing the critical change. But things only got worse when the skinny baldhead controlling the giant, and the giant by extension, noticed the two flying in the air. The giant was prompted to try and swat them out of the air.

Down on the ground, Mon and Hiro noticed the giant’s attention currently on Uzuki and Basho above. With its eyes away from them, they thought of this as a good opportunity to get Hoku without interference.

“Mon, it's distracted! Go for Hoku!” Hiro directed.

They rapidly made their way to the incapacitated blue-masked turtle but were interrupted by streams of paper flying right by them, catching them by surprise. They both witnessed as the flaming baldheads manipulated the new batch of paper to form around the giant’s severed legs, regenerating them completely, and moved in on the two turtles once it stood upright again.

“ _Massa ka!_ ” Mon gasped. He and Hiro panicked when they had to weave around the giant’s fists pounding onto the ground in an attempt to squish them.

At the same time, Basho had just finished readjusting himself after catching Uzuki from falling while just barely avoiding a swinging hand from the paper giant. “Thanks,” Uzuki panted when she got back on, but her eyes widened at spotting something else. “Basho, _ki yotta_!”

But neither Basho or Uzuki had long to try and make another move as the giant’s hand moved right back and smacked into them, sending them spinning out of control and nosediving back down onto the warehouse floor. The purple turtle and human girl groaned dizzily after impact, unable to prevent the giant from reaching down and grabbing them too, resulting in them being trapped in one hand and Hoku still in the other.

“Guys!” Hiro cried out as he saw his friend and genius brother trapped in the bad guys’ clutches with Hoku. Hiro was definitely getting mad now. He turned to Mon. “Let’s get ‘em!” he growled to his littlest brother who couldn’t agree more.

Mon spun his weapon again, this time opting to attack from a distance. For a new strategy, the orange-masked box turtle activated his weapon, setting it ablaze with cackling flame. Once he felt he was ready, he used the chain to grapple to the ceiling and propel himself into the air, then swinging his chain again to latch onto the giant’s wrists to keep the paper behemoth from crushing his comrades further.

As for Hiro, he really got fired up from seeing the thin baldhead sadistically pound his fists together, causing the giant holding Hoku, Basho, and Uzuki in both its hands to do the same, bashing them against each other with the intent of inflicting pain. Without further hesitation, Hiro went into another charging sprint, his Tonfas aglow with red energy that encompassed his clenched fists. As he rapidly got closer, the hulking baldhead stepped in front of his smaller partner, his own arms raised and poised to catch the big snapping turtle the same way he did with Hoku. Hiro didn't have time to spend on the bigger goon, so he concentrated, during up as much of the red magic in his Tonfas as he could think of.

Without paying attention, Hiro’s arms became enveloped in larger holographic versions of themselves, looking somewhat bigger but did not cover the entirety of the limbs, acting as hard light gauntlets. He caught the two guys by surprise, even going fast enough to catch them in his grasp and encircle them both in his own two magically generated enlarged hands. With an aggressive heave, Hiro spun the two baddies around and threw them into the wall in the other end of the warehouse. They both smashed into the wall with a metallic-ringing impact, putting an end to their control over the paper giant.

With the baldheads no longer in control of the giant, said giant stopped moving and shortly began teetering slowly until it fell over backwards right on top of the downed pair. It tumbled to the warehouse floor with a crash, instantly breaking apart and letting thousands of sheets of paper scatter across the building’s interior, with even a good number of these sheets blowing through the front doors and upper windows. After a few seconds, all the paper settled and all of the warehouse inside was an ocean of paper, occasionally dotted with several hardcovers of books.

Everyone, both friend and foe, poked their heads out of the mess, making a few sheets fly in the process, just to catch a glimpse of each other. The baldheads in particular growled at the gang, prompting the big muscly one to grab a sheet of paper and fold it, imitating his smaller partner’s origami technique. He would have gotten to throw another paper ninja at the guys too if it weren't for him realizing he made a paper swan instead.

The guys knew they shouldn't wait around for the flaming baldheads to finish up. “Mon! Use you weapon!” Hoku yelled to his little brother.

“On it!” Mon replied, activating his weapon’s flaming mode and swung it upwards at the warehouse ceiling, activating the building's conveniently present sprinkler system. As intended, the sprinklers went off, showering the entire indoor space with water and drenching all the available paper.

Observing their supply rapidly melting into mush told the two baldheads that they drew the short straw tonight. “You may have beaten us for now,” the larger baldhead growled, “but next time we meet, you will feel the agony of a thousand feet!”

His smaller partner turned to him. “I’d say you're on fire tonight,” he rasped, “but everything’s kinda all wet now, so…” With a shrug, he pulled out a slice of salami from when he and his partner robbed Hoku’s fake bookstore and did the same origami technique on it. Once he threw it, it poofed and transformed into a ninja, but it seemed to stagger like a melting zombie.

The guys couldn't help but recoil at the sight, with most of them reacting with sounds of disgust.

“Ugh! That's nightmare fuel, man!” Mon dramatically remarked. Fortunately for them and the salami ninja itself, it collapsed into a pile of little salami slices.

“Okay. Apparently, using salami for making ninjas doesn't work,” Basho commented, taking note of the futility in making ninjas out of meat slices.

The mood was fixed straight away with Hiro pointing at where the bad guys used to be. “Guys, look! They vanished!” Everyone looked the same direction and sure enough, the two baldheads were no longer in the warehouse.

“So, what are we looking at now?” Basho asked sensibly. Hiro paused, but then his gaze trailed to the pile of salami in front of him. Everyone else caught on to what he was thinking.

Hoku spoke up first. “Hiro, no. _Akan_. No!” he tried to say while Hiro inched over to the pile of unattended meat.

“No! Hiro, look at me! _Ore o mite!_ _Akan!_ ” Basho seconded, trying to dissuade him with his diplomatic approach.

“ _Hiro, shiyan de ~ehoshiin'yakedo! Nani shiton nen ka nitsu o tte kangaete!_ ” Uzuki tried begging, looking rather concerned about her friend’s behavior.

None of their protesting seemed to dissuade Hiro for one second. Without taking even another second, he grabbed a handful of the salami and stuffed it in his mouth, chewing it up with a slobber. Everyone was automatically cringing and making sounds of disgust.

“ _Iya ya_ ,” Mon groaned from the sight, stifling a gag.

Hiro only finally noticed the others’ reactions once he swallowed his mouthful. “What?” he objected. “At least I was still standing and not walking! Besides, five-second rule!” No one had anything to say.

“So, did we win?” Mon asked curiously.

“Well, let's think,” Hoku cut in with a smile. “Did the bad guys get to do what they wanted with the books they stole? No. Did they keep their paper ninja army and make it grow bigger? No. Did they get to keep their supply of paper for their army? No. Were they otherwise thwarted and us unscathed? Yes! Hero mission accomplished, baby!”

Hearing that made the rest of the team especially happy, unable to help but do a party pounce together on him. For a little bit, they were play-wrestling in a curled-up ball of limbs and torsos amid the soggy piles of wet paper until they got tired out, but even after that, they still shared a few laughs. It was rough and it didn't get them closer to getting a headstart on the mosquito mess, but it was a start regardless.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Introducing another couple of staple characters. The footprints on their faces should be a dead giveaway!
> 
> Fun Facts:  
> Nishinari ward (西成区) is actually home to two yakuza groups (Yakuza, ‘ヤクザ’: Japanese mobs/mafia/gangsters) operating in Osaka. One is the “Sakaume-gumi” (酒梅組) and the other is the “Azuma-gumi” (東組).  
> Taisho ward (大正区) is known for the canals defining its physical features and gets its name from “Taisho Bridge”, which was built during Japan’s ‘Taishō Period’. A fourth of its resident population hails from Okinawa.  
> Not just in Osaka, but anywhere in Japan, one doesn't walk and eat/drink/smoke at the same time. If you feel like snacking, having a drink, or taking a smoke, you wait/stand at the side and do your thing, then resume walking. Ditto for running, obviously. People might not stop you if you do, but they'll let you know in one way or another that it's frowned upon.
> 
> Osaka Dialect phrases:  
> On, saya (おん、さや): “Oh, come on!” | Standard: Ā, sā (ああ、さあ)  
> Yuu teru dake ~e (言うてるだけぇ): “I’m just saying” | Standard: Itteru dake (言ってるだけ)  
> O bandesu, “Hokū no Antīku-Magajīn” e yau koso (お晩です、「ホクーのアンティークマガジーン」へやうこそ): “Good evening. Welcome to Hoku’s Antique Magazines.” | Standard: Konbanwa, “Hokū no Antīku-Magajīn' e yōkoso (こんばんわ、「ホクーのアンティークマガジーン」へようこそ)  
> Koko de ~eha, saishin-no-goshippu o hanbai shi, kasutamu-no-goshippu-komisshon o insatsu suru wa (ここでぇは、最新のゴシップを販売し、カスタムのゴシップコミッションを印刷するわ): “Here, we sell the latest gossips and print custom gossip commissions.” | Standard: Kokode wa, saishin-no-goshippu o hanbai shi, kasutamu-no-goshippu-komisshon o insatsu shimasu (ここでは、最新のゴシップを販売し、カスタムのゴシップコミッションを印刷します)  
> Rafu ni purē shitai nen ka? (ラフにプレーしたいねんか？): “You wanna play rough?” | Standard: Rafu ni purē shitaidesu ka? (ラフにプレーしたいですか？)  
> Honma no rafu ninja o o mise suru wa! (ほんまのラフ忍者をお見せするわ！): “I’ll show you a real rough ninja!” | Standard: Hontō no rafu ninja o o mise shimasu! (本当のラフ忍者をお見せします！)  
> Korera no henjin ni betsu no dageki o ataetai dekka? (これらの変人に別の打撃を与えたいでっか？): “Wanna give these weirdos another beating?” | Standard: Korera no henjin ni betsu no dageki o ataetaidesu ka? (これらの変人に別の打撃を与えたいですか？)  
> Tokuina ko tte o karera ni misete miya (得意なこってを彼らにみせてみや): “Show them what you’re good at” | Standard: Tokuina koto o karera ni misete yo (得意なことを彼らに見せてよ)  
> Massa ka (まっさか): “No way/You’re kidding”  
> Jibun wa sugure toru tte omoude ka? (自分は優れとるって思うでか？): “You think you’re that good?” | Standard: Omae wa sugurete iru to omoimasu ka? (お前は優れていると思いますか)  
> Hai, seya na (はい、せやな): “Yeah, that’s right” | Standard: Hai, sōda na (はい、そうだな)  
> Ki yotta (来よった): “Incoming!” | Standard: Kita (来た)  
> Ore o mite (俺を見て): “Look at me”  
> Hiro, shiyan de ~ehoshiin'yakedo (ヒロ、しやんでぇほしいんやけど): “Hiro, please don’t!” | Standard: Hiro, shinaide kudasai (ヒロ、しないでください)  
> Nani shiton nen ka nitsu o tte kangaete (何しとんねんかにつおって考えて): “Think about what you’re doing” | Standard: Nani o shite iru ka ni tsuite kangaete (何をしているかについて考えて)  
> Iya ya (嫌や): “Gross/I hate it” | Standard: Iya da (嫌だ)


	8. Nothing Butaniku Trouble

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you guys don't mind an opening theme for the fullest episode-like experience. Let me say thanks to a loyal reader who's been following my story for giving me this:
> 
> Rise... of the...  
> Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!  
> Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!  
> (Rise of the!) Teenage Mutant Mutant Turtles!  
> Heroes in a half-shell  
> Turtle power!
> 
> Rising up against evil, paint the city green,  
> Hiro's ready for a fight, Hoku's making a scene.  
> Mon's (Got!) got mad skills, Basho (Rocks!) rocks machines.  
> With each other they discover their destiny and rise!  
> Booyakasha!
> 
> Rise of the...  
> Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!  
> Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!  
> (Rise of the!) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!  
> Heroes in a half shell  
> Turtle power! (Rise!)

In an empty corner of an uneventful neighborhood block in Osaka, the turtles were getting down to business sneaking into a closed and unoccupied restaurant.

It took a few seconds of sneaking to the front door without being seen and Basho using his gadgetry to pick the lock and also disable security systems, not to mention stay clear of police surveillance of the immediate surrounding area. After all, all of the turtles – particularly Hiro and Hoku – had briefly gotten into a tangle with the yellow tape before arriving at the door.

Opening the door, the guys snuck into the dark unlit restaurant, taking care not to bump into any of the tables and jostle the chairs sitting upside-down on top of them. Even though they already knew where to go, none of them could help leaping around every corner of the establishment to take an extensive look-see.

Basho was fiddling with the napkins and cutlery in a nearby waiter’s basket using the robot arms extended from his battle shell. Hiro allowed himself to do a dive-roll through the kitchen doors to have a look at the room in which the master chef spent much of his culinary days in. Mon hopped right behind a bar counter and let his fingertips ding the upside-down wine glasses a bit. Hoku took to the ceiling, briefly grappling onto the iron black chandelier which swung a bit upon his first touchdown.

After a few minutes of surveying the area, the turtles regrouped back in the main dining hall. “It doesn't look like he's here,” Hiro updated everyone quietly. “Hey Basho, you sure we didn't miss all the rooms here?”

Basho lifted up his goggles. “What if I told you that I already did a thorough analysis of every cross-referenced photo of the restaurant for ten straight minutes before we got here?” The other guys still waited without a word. Basho concluded, “No. That's all the rooms.”

“I still can't get over how we’re literally standing inside ‘ _Shatō-Puretanshē_ ’ right now, seeing it in all its glory!” Mon squeaked in elation.

“ _Former_ glory, Mon,” Basho corrected his little brother. “Don't forget that this joint’s been closed down about a week ago ever since the owner vanished.”

“Well, it still feels nice to actually be at the scene,” Mon conceded.

Hiro turned to give the whole area another scan with his eyes. “Okay. We know that pig-mutant’s snuck in here with the silverfish-mutants he bagged up earlier. There aren't any other back doors in the place, meaning there’s only one way in and out, but he's nowhere in sight. That can only mean he's hidden somewhere, which means there's gotta be a hidden room.”

Basho went right back to showing the results of his scanners on visible screens, careful to lower the brightness on those screens to avoid blinding his brothers in the dark. “Well, I did do a preliminary scan of the building's foundation while you were talking and it turns out there is a tunnel going underneath us, right next to the restaurant in question.”

“Wait, so you mean to tell me he just phased through the wall and went underground on the next street over?” Hoku laughed, leaning on his sword. “And I thought ghosts were beyond your suspension of disbelief.” He leaned forward to get right next to where Basho's ear would be. “Didn't we all see the guy walk into the building that had only one door?”

Basho crossed his arms and smirked right back. “Not unless he never went into the restaurant to begin with. Did you see him walk past the building first before sneaking into hiding underground? I know I did!” He finished off by lightly bumping his hip into Hoku's for an extra point.

“ _Sure you did_ ,” Hoku muttered, rubbing his affected hip.

Hiro was fired up once again after hearing Basho's previous input, like he usually was. “Perfect! Let's get right to following that guy’s trail and saving the day and the restaurant…and the restaurant’s owner…whoever he is…”

* * *

Somewhere in the spacious underground tunnels below Osaka, neighboring the subway tunnels that wove across the city's underbelly, the turtles searched for their suspected mutant target. Following the sounds the aforementioned mutant was making, they traced him to an empty alcove, fiddling with several assorted kitchen items under some shoddily installed lightbulbs.

The guys watched as the tall and rotund pig-mutant apparently boiled the small silverfish he collected earlier in a cauldron filled with a boiling green soup. He then reached to another part of his cooking space to grab a salt shaker and a few slices of lemon.

“A pinch of salt, dispersed lemon juice, and then a simmering stir before being left to boil should do the trick,” the porcine said out loud to no one but himself. “With those steps, that should really bring out the symphony of the palate. As I say,” he snickered, “ _Aji o tokihanatsu!_ ”

“ _Aji o tokihanatsu?_ ” Mon gasped from his hiding spot. “But how would he know that catchphrase unless…” Mon's eyes slowly widened, his hands clutching his head at the implications. “Oh no. Could he be behind Uchinaga’s disappearance?”

Hiro, who was near Mon, also looked concerned from hearing Mon’s words. “What are you saying, Mon? You telling me this guy kidnapped…who, again?”

“ ** _Yuma Uchinaga_** ,” Mon clarified frantically, “the celebrity chef of _Namba_ , the host of the _Mikudasu-Daidokoro_ show, the culinary master who screams and smacks at up-and-learning cooks on TV ‘til they give up their dreams? He’s the founder and owner of _Shatō-Puretanshē_!”

Mon reminisced on the last time he watched that show involving the aforementioned chef, particularly in an episode where Uchinaga was disciplining a cooking contestant with a slab of pork. He could still hear the man’s words:

_“Sore wa butaniku no rizotto o tsukuru hōhō de ~ehen! Aji o tokihanatsu tamedo tsuku hitsuyō ya!”_

The little turtle sighed. “He’s my role model.”

The porcine mutant added one last dab of herbs to the soupy broth, licking his lips as he watched the little leaf fragments sink into and become part of the mixture. The turtles watched him slowly reach towards the broth with one hand.

“Oh no, don’t tell me he’s actually going to eat that,” Basho recoiled in repressed horror, his other brothers reacting similarly with Hiro averting his eyes, Mon covering them, and Hoku trying to stifle an urge to puke. But strangely enough, the pig-mutant didn’t seem to eat it the way the turtles expected with any other creature alongside humans.

Slipping off a glove, the mutant slimily unwound his exposed arm like untwisting a braid, causing the arm to change from a single limb to a bunch of tentacles. Directing the tentacles to the contents in the cauldron, he allowed them to snake their way into the soup he prepared, pulsing and gyrating as they began sucking it all like straws. The turtle bros still found it disgusting.

However, at least for Basho, he expressed wonder at observing how spots of glowing green appeared to climb up the pig-mutant’s tendrils through the veins and into the core of his body, causing him to react with positive exhilaration. “Ahh, yes!” the porcine let out an ecstatic cry. “I can feel the rush of your delicious energy!” He continued to drain from the pot when his nose twitched and then sniffed, catching a whiff of something he didn’t know about until now. “What’s this now?” he grinned, “Am I smelling the faint freshwater fragrance of mutant turtle?” He licked his lips again. “I can taste it now: a terrapin tenderloin softened by a low boiling simmer, then sizzled over a fish oil spread and sprinkled with basil, cilantro, and a tiny pinch of wasabi.”

“Mm, that sounds good,” Mon drooled from what he heard from the barrel he hid behind while rubbing his hands together in anticipation. All that earned him was a hand on the mouth from Basho.

“I believe he was talking about eating us,” Basho tiredly corrected his littlest brother.

Mon huffed, grabbing and pulling his older brother’s hand down. “Well excuse me for expressing flattery at getting eaten in style!”

Hoku turned to Hiro. “Okay, big bro. What’s our plan on nabbing this hog?” There was no reason for him to wait for Hiro’s answer, however, as the bigger snapping turtle was no longer with the other three.

The pig-mutant’s inquisitive smell-search was interrupted when the sound of feet landing with a boom on top of some barrels startled him, making him spin around with a jump. Standing on the barrels in front of him, Hiro was hunched and ready for a fight. “Dinner time’s over, _buta-han_!” he declared with a Tonfa pointed right at the pig. “We’re gonna need you to come with us!”

The pig grinned instead, reaching behind to pull out an anvil-sized hammer that was spiked on either end and supported by a handle shaped like a bone, which gave the impression of a meat tenderizer. “Come with you?” he leered, “Perhaps I will, but first, why don’t you join me for dinner?” With that said, he made the first move, rapidly moving away from his ‘kitchen’ and preparing to throw the first swing with his hammer, though he also took a moment to use his other arm to snatch one last slurping bite of his own cooking along the way.

Hiro tried to sidestep the pig’s hammer and counter with a punch of his own. It did knock the pig’s head back a little, so Hiro tried landing another. The pig mutant briefly tanked that strike as well before going at Hiro’s chin with the butt of his hammer’s handle, striking the turtle so hard he was sure the shock traveled to his teeth too. The pig mutant then flipped his meat-tenderizing hammer to give Hiro a full whack, sending him flying shell first into another bunch of barrels like a bowling ball to pins.

“And it looks like we’re flying by the seat of our shells again,” Hoku slumped before coming out of hiding to help Hiro, with Basho and Mon predictably following behind him closely. Hoku went from behind the mutant and jumped off a few barrels, coming down upon the pig with his sword raised. The pig mutant could still smell Hoku though, making him turn around and raise his hammer to guard his front, allowing the turtle’s sword to clang against the block of metal. That move was a convenient opening for Mon to use his weapon to momentarily tie the porcine up and throw him in another direction. The pig mutant rolled on the hard gravel for a bit but then slowed himself down with his feet scraping across the ground, but by that time, Basho was upon him with his spinning rocket hammer. One swift swing was enough to send the pig mutant staggering in Hoku’s direction. Hoku felt excited, as he saw that as a chance to try out a new trick with his portals. Before he did so, he made sure to take a swing at the big guy, making him bounce back in Basho’s direction, though he didn’t go far. Once he got him moving, the red-eared slider waved his sword to open a portal and jumped in. Another portal opened up next to the pig mutant, with Hiro flying out of it to deliver another strike.

“How would you like your _kushikatsu_ done?” Hoku taunted after putting some distance between himself and his adversary.

The pig mutant didn’t let his hungry grin drop once, opting to smash a barrel under his hammer. “With a dressing of teriyaki, perhaps, as I… _Tear into you_?” Lifting his hammer again, he did an underhanded swing at a bunch of other nearby barrels, hitting them hard enough that he sent them rolling through the air at Hoku, Basho, and Mon. Unsurprisingly, the guys were nimble enough to jump between those barrels while standing on top of the ones still standing on the ground.

The pig mutant swung his hammer behind himself to block an attempted sneak attack from Hiro who had recovered from his knockout earlier. Hiro improvised by interspersing his fisticuffs with a few light hopping sidesteps. He put his fists forward in different angles, hoping to score a strike in an opening, even if accidental. “Chew on this!” came Hiro’s battle bark, throwing a red aura-charged punch at the mutant’s face. Despite said mutant dodging his strike, Hiro threw a punch that combined both of his Tonfa-held fists. “You really give quite the workout for your size,” Hiro panted energetically as he noted the pig’s surprisingly nimble movements, “ _Ware wa niku ga ase wokaku yau ni mi!_ ”

“Ooh, so you want to pound this pork, huh?” the pig-mutant leered. “Well, allow me to show you how it’s done. I'm wanting to know your flavor!” The guy jumped into the air and raised his hammer over his head, arcing in Hiro’s direction. Hiro managed to jump to the side, letting the spiked hammer smash into the gravel that it made a crater. Hiro spotted a few extra barrels next to him and remembered the trick the pig-mutant pulled earlier. Charging up his fists, he used one punch to toss a barrel into the air and the next punch to launch it at his foe. Unsurprisingly, the pig moved to the side as he knew exactly the kind of trick that was being used against him. Knowing he was running out of tricks pretty soon, Hiro impulsively knocked a couple more barrels into the air and jumped at the same time. With both his fists charged up again, Hiro hammered them down onto the falling barrels, right on top of the giant mutant porcine, unknowingly doing it so hard that the guy actually sank into the ground.

It was when the dust started to settle after being blown into the air that Hiro recoiled at the realization of what he did. Taking a short side glance to his three younger brothers who looked at him wordlessly, he couldn't take the silence. “Uh…is he okay, guys?” he asked meekly, twiddling his fingers together while weakly pointing at where he had just smashed the guy into the ground.

“I sure hope he is,” Mon piped up first. “I’d hate for anything to happen to him before he tells me what he's done with Uchinaga- _han_!” The little box turtle smashed a fist against his palm for emphasis, making even his older brothers flinch. None of them had time for an answer though, as they all picked up the faint sounds of chatter, like the squeaky gremlin-like voices of something miniature. The crushed barrels that laid on top of the pig mutant were suddenly slammed off and back into the air, but it was the origin of that phenomenon that caught the guys off guard.

Instead of the large-framed and top-heavy porcine from earlier, there were now multiple smaller versions of him, only with a more squat shape. Mon would've thought that they were cute in their own way if it weren't for them jumping at him and swarming all over his body, doing the same with the other three turtles. The guys ran in every direction, trying in vain to swat the little piglet versions of the enemy mutant off their shells. Hiro, Basho, and Hoku were able to run out of the ‘kitchen’-room to get more space in swatting them off.

Mon followed closely behind his brothers and tried to do the same thing, but it led to him falling flat on his face, one of those gremlins having grabbed and yanked him by his ankles. Mon hollered out to his brothers for help as the gremlins all over him dragged him back into the ‘kitchen’.

At the same time, the other three were busy trying to neutralize the other little piglets once they felt they were clear.

“Amazing,” Basho couldn’t help gasping in astonishment for a bit. “It seems that this pig mutant’s absorbed the mutant-silverfish’s ability!” He even marveled at how the little piglets seemed to have copies of the original’s hammer weapon too, wondering how that power also applied to separate inorganic entities such as that.

Hoku improvised by attempting to use his sword’s portal powers to send the piglets in all sorts of directions. At the very least, they were easier to goad into whatever direction he wanted – he just had to let them all chase him in one group so he could pull a last-minute jump while opening a portal, giving them no time to avoid running into it before he opened a second portal to send them out in an undesirable direction. “Back in the pigpen for you!” he mocked the horde as he watched it get thrown in an unbelievable direction between portals.

“ _Hokū,-betsu no jōdan o ii, uchi wa jibun o kanden-shi sa seru tte chikai ya!_ ” Basho growled under his breath when he heard his blue-masked brother making his one-liner nearby, all while fending off another batch of piglets with his spinning convertible staff.

Hiro did his best to pound and knock away every piglet that leapt in the air after him, even making sure he knocked them out good against several concrete pillars and derelict subway cars. He kept going at it, making sure to make each hit a little harder than the last to make sure the lesson he taught them stuck. With his strength, he managed to send all of the little piglets running away, and he saw that Hoku and Basho were able to do the same. But there was one detail he noticed. “Guys! Where’s Mon?”

* * *

Back in the ‘kitchen’, the original pig mutant had just reformed himself, every little piglet having fled the turtle team and grouped back together instinctively. He nonchalantly resumed his preparation activities, cutting vegetables and grinding herbs on his makeshift counter and cutting board. At the same time behind him, Mon was wriggling furiously within his bindings as the pig had tied him to a pole that worked like a spit, a fire crackling underneath him. Things were not going his way, as he could see. It was bad enough that he was facing the impending fate of being eaten by that pig-mutant, but it was worse that he still couldn’t figure out what said mutant had to do with his cooking idol Yuma Uchinaga.

“ _Sonen'u na shinsende ~eyarakai hyōhon'ya_ ,” the pig-mutant said to Mon without turning to face him, “it seems you are the youngest of the lot, which I can anticipate terrapin veal…‘ _aji o tokihanatsu_ ’ this will, indeed!”

Hearing him say that catchphrase again really got Mon back on edge. “Don’t say that like it’s your own gimmick!” he cried indignantly, though he didn’t sound upset enough to actually be dead serious. “What’d you do with Uchinaga- _han_?”

The porcine turned his head slightly to let Mon glimpse a half-smirk that implied he pitied the boy. “Tell me, do you know the technique for enhancing the silvery texture of bluefin tuna tempura?”

Mon remained silent for a second as he took in the pig's seemingly random question. “Uh, yeah!” he answered rather proudly, “you gotta press and roll it like a cross between ironing clothes and spreading raw pastry dough.”

“And how is that performed?”

Mon turned his eyes away from the large porcine mutant for a moment so he could recall his knowledge. “Uh…hmm…I’d need to use a metal rolling pin that's soaked in boiling water and still has steam billowing from it. I never got to see him use it, but once he's done from behind the curtain, it looks mouthwatering.”

The porcine narrowed his eyes as his grin grew even wider. He leaned down to the little turtle. “Would you like to see it? I can show you.”

Mon's eyes widened at the question laid out to him. “But…no one knows. No one’s even seen him do it. It’s never been shown on TV or live stage ever!”

The pig mutant then made the widest grin ever, exposing every one of his crooked teeth. Turning back to his makeshift kitchen counter, he fished out a metallic cylinder-shaped tool from the bubbling cauldron he was no longer cooking in, which Mon recognized as a rolling pin. Watching the vapor dancing off the rolling pin’s surface, Mon saw the pig place a strip of leftover mutant silverfish on the cutting board and push the steaming rolling pin onto it, an audible hiss emanating from it. The large mutant slowly rolled the pin over the slab and when he was done, he grabbed the finished meaty piece and held it right up to Mon’s face. “ _Donaizo_ ,” he goaded the little turtle, “have a look and take a whiff.”

Initially hesitant but won out by curiosity, Mon slowly and carefully moved his head closer to the piece of meat held in the pig-mutant’s hand. He examined it meticulously to find familiarity in the way the meat’s silvery texture shone above the flames and when he took a deep breath through his nose to inhale the expertly cooked aroma, his eyes widened like saucers. “ _Oh me gosh_ ,” he gasped voicelessly, “ _you can’t be_ …”

The tall porcine was snickering. “Oh, but I can be, and I am.” By that point, he had a blade in each hand, a kitchen knife in his left and a cleaver in his right, sharpening them with each other with a piercing shing. “What peon would be dense enough to try and imitate the legendary _Yuma Uchinaga_ , let alone succeed?”

Mon was still reeling from the shock of the revelation that this predatory pig mutant was none other than his own cooking idol. This truth that opened right up to him in his face was enough to make him wish he was about to be eaten by a loony fan instead. He was already sweating and dripping grease off his body into the fire below. This wasn’t as stylish as he imagined it to be. He closed his eyes, hoping something nice would happen, but felt himself being rudely jostled from his place over the fire. He cracked open one eye to find a bunch of familiar faces having grabbed hold of the pole he was tied to as they carried him away. “ _Ware-tachi wa!_ ” he said, quietly but elatedly.

“ _We gotcha, Mon,_ ” Hiro whispered to his little brother with his recognizable tone of assurance. “ _No turtle left behind!_ ”

By the time they ran fast and far enough away, the porcine mutant – **Yuma Uchinaga** – had picked up their scent and hurried after them with his meat-tenderizing hammer back in his hands. “ _Koko ni modotte koi!_ I used a whole tub of butter on him!”

The guys were racing back the way they came, hoping to ditch the pig-mutant by reaching the surface before him. It’s not that they didn’t have a chance, but that they’d rather not waste their time with the voracious villain as their hands were already full. As they made their way around another corner in the dark, Mon couldn’t help but speak up, since they were no longer undetected anyways. “How’d you guys find me? I thought you were fighting those little versions!”

“Oh, we did,” Hiro tried to answer his brother humbly. “Beating them all off was like swatting flies. Then we hid in a subway car to plan on how to rescue you. It took work, but I made a plan.”

“Yeah, after you took three minutes to try and come up with something workable and I gave you all the hints,” Basho cut in. Hiro looked embarrassed.

The guys made it within several meters of where they first entered the underground when Uchinaga caught up to them. They all jumped as they split up to avoid him throwing the hammer down their way.

“You’ll get the teeth for making me waste my meal!” the porcine snarled irritably. He then readied his hammer again and even unwound his other free arm into an array of tentacles. Without further hesitation, he whipped his tentacled arm at the turtles who split up once again, with Basho and Hoku coming at him first as a distraction while Hiro looked for a place to hide and untie Mon. Hoku slid and deflected a strike from the pig’s hammer while Basho had to move his body in a rough dance when the pig’s tendrils got a hold of his staff.

Meanwhile, Hiro was just finishing up taking the last of the rope off Mon to free him from the pole he was stuck on. “Alright, free like a bee! Ready to help sting this hog?”

“Sure thing,” Mon limbered up the joints in his shoulders. At the same time as he took out his Kusari-fundo, he leapt over Hiro as he told him from other his shoulder, “You’re not gonna believe what I found out about the pig-guy!”

Basho and Hoku were doing a good job of making the porcine scramble on his feet, constantly having to move his body as he looked for the agile turtles hopping left and right above among the concrete columns. Getting tired of being led on like this, Uchinaga went over and started smashing the columns to pieces using his hammer. He was further inconvenienced when Hiro had charged right behind him and dove at him in a football tackle, sending him falling down and sliding on the gravel.

Hiro didn’t get long to hold him down though, as the pig reached at him with his tentacled arm and grabbed him, lifted him into the air, and threw him aside. Such a move against him should do nothing else to him apart from making him have to take some time to get back on his feet, but for some reason, he was feeling somewhat weaker than usual. “ _Whoa_ ,” he groaned, feeling as though his head was swimming, “ _Where’d all my juice go?_ ” Even his steps were uneven.

The pig regained his confidence, his tentacled arm pulsating with green glowing energy slithering up its flesh as it reformed into a proper arm. “I like the way you taste,” he hissed, watching as Hiro collapsed onto the ground, “maybe I prefer you raw.” He walked towards the large and incapacitated snapping turtle leisurely, his meat-tenderizing hammer dragging along the gravel.

“Hiro!” Hoku yelled with worry, traveling to where Uchinaga was by creating another portal. When he jumped out of the portal, he got ready to slash at the guy, but the porcine simply swatted him away with a fist, sending the turtle flying in Basho’s direction. He flew fast enough that Basho couldn’t react in time, leading to both turtles tumbling onto the ground in a heap of enmeshed limbs. All the while, Uchinaga stopped right in front of Hiro and leaned towards the snapping turtle’s face, his drooling toothy maw widening itself around his head.

“Hey, Uchinaga- _han_!”

Uchinaga, apparently now being called by his human name, looked up to where the young voice yelled at him, and saw Mon standing on one of the concrete support rafters above. Mon didn’t waste a second. “Just wanna know: How do you get your pork so tender?”

Hearing a question about how he cooks – his signature style – had Uchinaga in a more positively boosted mood. “Why, you just have to pound every part of it –” he managed to say before he realized what he was looking at right this moment.

Mon was holding the chain of his Kusari-fundo, which was extended past the turtle and trailed below him to a bundle of barrels on the ground, being wrapped around them and tied in place by the little sawblade ball on the end of it. With a smirk, Mon heaved the chain-tied bundle of barrels off the ground, over his shoulder, and hurdling down at the pig. Uchinaga only had enough time to stare the incoming bludgeon head-on before the barrels slammed down on top of him, burying him in a metal-dented pile.

Once the dust had settled, Mon leapt off the rafter and touched down on the ground. With a hand on his hip, he faced the crumpled pile the pig was under. “And that’s why Hiro thinks you’re the ‘ ** _Nikuase_** ’!” he yelled with a pointed finger. With that said, he turned around and kicked the gravel behind him for emphasis. He noticed that Hoku and Basho were standing around him and looking at him with a bit of concern, but felt curious as to why he was being looked at that way.

Hiro had just sat back up when he recovered enough from the previous energy drain he was subjected to. “Ugh!” he groaned, rubbing his head, “ _Imanani ya ga yatta no?_ ” Hoku and Basho didn’t answer, only pointing to Mon silently and awkwardly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New mutant! Introducing “Nikuase” (ニクーアセ | 肉汗), whose name is literally taken from Meat Sweats, the character he’s so blatantly based off of. He was originally a regular Japanese human, a Kansai native, who went by the name of “Yuma Uchinaga” (内永 優真). 
> 
> His restaurant’s name, “Shatō-Puretanshē,” (シャトー プレタンシェー) is exactly the same as the restaurant from the original show, “Chateau Prétenche”, spelled in English but transcribed in Japanese phonetics. For a visual example, the restaurant’s sign is written in English letters, but pronounced with Japanese syllables when read out loud.
> 
> Namba (難波) is a district in Osaka that sits between the wards Chuo (中央区) and Naniwa (浪速区). The Dotonbori canal area is located there, along with one of Osaka’s newest office/shopping complexes, ‘Namba Parks’ (なんばパークス). 
> 
> Dialect Phrases:  
> Aji o tokihanatsu (味を解き放つ): “Unleash the flavor”  
> Mikudasu-daidokoro (見下す台所): Condescending Kitchen  
> Sore wa butaniku no rizotto o tsukuru hōhō de ~ehen (それわ豚肉のリゾットを作る方法でぇへん): “That's not how you make a pork risotto!” | Standard: Sore wa butaniku no rizotto o tsukuru hōhōdenai (それわ豚肉のリゾットを作る方法でない)  
> Aji o tokihanatsu tamedo tsuku hitsuyō ya (味を解き放つためどつく必要や): “You've got to pound it to unleash the flavor!” | Standard: Aji o tokihanatsu tame tataku hitsuyōda (味を解き放つため叩く必要だ)  
> Buta-han (豚はん): “Mr. Pig” | Standard: Buta-san (豚さん)  
> Ware wa niku ga ase wokaku yau ni mi (ワレは肉が汗をかくやうに見): “You look like the meat sweats” | Standard: Omae wa niku ga ase o kaku yō ni mi (お前は肉が汗をかくように見)  
> Hokū,-betsu no jōdan o ii, uchi wa jibun o kanden-shi sa seru tte chikai ya (ホクー、別の冗談を言い、うちは自分を感電死させるって誓や): “Hoku, you make another joke, and I swear I’ll electrocute you!” | Standard: Hokū,-betsu no jōdan o ii, boku wa omae o kanden-shi sa seruto chikai yo (ホクー、別の冗談を言い、僕はお前を感電死させると誓よ)  
> Sonen'u na shinsende ~eyarakai hyōhon'ya (そねんうな新鮮でぇやらかい標本や): “Such a fresh and tender specimen” | Standard: Sono yōna shinsende yawarakai hyōhonda (そのような新鮮で柔らかい標本だ)  
> Donaizo (どないぞ): “Here you go/Go ahead/Enjoy” | Standard: Dōzo (どうぞ)  
> Ware-tachi wa (ワレたちわ): “You guys” | Standard: Omaetachi wa (お前たちわ)  
> Koko ni modotte koi (ここに戻ってこい): “Get back here!”  
> Imanani ya ga yatta no (今何やがやったの): “What just happened?” | Standard: Ima nani ga atta no (今何があったの)


	9. Kaba-Bunraku

“You think we can catch him if we trick him into doing a puppet show?”

Mon couldn't help but let his curiosity build and grow inside him as he and his brothers carefully looked down from the rafters below. Carefully scanning the wooden performance stage below, the guys were hoping to catch some faint glimpse of the mutant they came to find.

“Sure, if he likes his puppets as much as his own pet,” Hoku answered his little brother’s question on behalf of his other two elder brothers. “Finding his hobbies is as easy as finding a hippo in a lacquer shop.”

“Haha, funny! I wonder what hippo that'd be!” Basho gave a mock-laugh with a roll of his eyes and a slacked smile, not really amused but humoring his younger brother anyway.

Having headed over to **Osaka Shochikuza Theatre** after getting a news report of professional entertainers going missing within its surrounding areas, the guys only had one clue to go on. The first entertainer to vanish was cited as a stage magician who performed with large animals, and ever since that happened, similar entertainers who performed with any sort of critters, big or small, pet or loaned, were being snatched away too. Their most obvious clue, fortunately for them, was the fact that the news compiled bystander accounts to sum up the one responsible as having the appearance of a hippo walking on two legs.

“Okay guys,” Hiro readied himself on a rafter to jump down. “I guess we should get this show started.” He took a moment to primp himself until he was nice and fluffy inside his goofy mascot suit. “Gotta look good for the big guy.”

“Oh, just one more thing,” Mon cut in energetically. Fishing out a small bottle of a pink liquid from his shell, he held it up to Hiro and squeezed a ball attached to a tube to spray the substance all over him. He sprayed several times to get the tailor-made fragrance all over the snapping turtle's hippo costume. Hiro, on the other hand, breathed it all in with a dreamy look on his face, as if he were relaxing in a bed of cherry blossom petals. Once he felt he was ready, Hiro leapt right down and landed on the stage with his own two feet.

“Time to put on the rosiest show Osaka’s ever seen!” Hiro smiled and gave himself a confidence boost before placing the clunky hippo mask over his head.

At the same time, the other three turtles jumped down from the metal rafters that held the nearby stage lights and landed next to their brother. Standing in the center of the shining light, the three of them were clad from neck to feet in single tight black suits, the whole of the fabrics hugging their entire bodies.

“Puppet ready?” Basho asked Hoku and Mon with relaxed determination, carefully paying attention to his double-checking for his brothers’ preparation for their plan that was currently in operation. The blue and orange-masked turtles answered him by raising the body-sized puppet they held together in front of them and twiddled the sticks attached to its limbs, making the marionette move its limbs in a handwave in accordance. Basho lightly shook his head at his brothers’ antics, though he wasn’t displeased. Though for him personally, this operation would’ve been a lot more entertainingly poetic had their target planned to strike at the **National Bunraku Theatre** instead.

There was nothing unusual about the puppet being as big as it was instead of being hand-sized, nor was there anything weird about the way its turtle puppeteers were dressed. This was, after all, going to be an actual hands-on demonstration of the bunraku art. Basho, Hoku, and Mon were dressed up in all-black body suits and would soon don full-headed mask-hoods over their heads, completely obscuring their bodies in black. They would then hide behind the life-sized puppet they had hand in hand, manipulating it with the sticks attached to its limbs to effectively play-act once their hippo target finally arrived on the scene.

Hiro, of course, was still the main event, wearing the hippo costume and having been sprayed with the scent of a female of the same species. Once he got the hippo guy’s attention, he would keep him in a stupor long enough to get close to him and slow him down personally so that the rest of his brothers could get an opening to neutralize him themselves. But in case that approach didn’t work immediately, then Basho, Hoku, and Mon would prepare themselves by spraying the puppet with the scent of an opposing male hippo, in which the scent would make him feel competitive enough to get distracted by it while all four would jump him.

Basho got behind the puppet with Hoku and Mon to get into place, with all three of the puppeteers donning their full masks. At the same time, Hiro braced himself for the imminent arrival of their target, knowing it was going to happen very soon. After all, it had been hours since they transmitted that fake broadcast concerning a 'new upstart entertainer with the best trained pet’ making his debut at Shochikuza. All they had to do now was wait.

They waited. The stage was empty, dim with the exception of a spotlight or two, and plainly dead silent except for the tapping of feet.

“ _Min'na, yametenka!_ ” Hiro tried to say from inside the hippo mask, though it came out considerably muffled.

“ _Kan'nin'na, nīchan._ _Kōhatsu-sha o mattoru tte ki wa shaanai_ ,” Basho answered from underneath his tightfitting mask, his voice coming out slightly muffled as well.

“ _Nan?_ ” Mon asked from under his own mask, apparently not having understood what his older brother had said through his mask.

*CRASH*

The turtles’ attention was swiftly caught by the sound of doors being smashed open and apart at the end of the performance hall, way at the back of all the seats sitting below the stage. The dust kicked up from the interruption then cleared, unveiling the intruder to be a rather large top-heavy man. He wore a purple dress suit complemented by a pair of brown dress shoes and a white dress shirt underneath his jacket with the collar secured by a red bowtie. He also wore a light purple turban on his head, but it was his head itself that told the turtles that their mark had indeed finally arrived: he had the face of a dark grey hippo, only endowed with a curly black moustache and traces of black hair under his turban.

“Mysterious new entertainer! It is I, **Kabatsukai**!” the bipedal hippo man announced loudly, his voice traveling across the theatre hall. “Prepare to have the shortest career of any performer in Osakan history!”

Hiro stood in place, waiting for and hoping his brothers would pick up the cue to begin the charade. Basho, Hoku, and Mon began manipulating the sticks, moving every body part of the mannequin-sized puppet to start acting. But of course, it wasn't enough to merely play the puppet – the three also had to make it talk. If only the guys actually planned, or at least agreed, on who would be the voice…

Fortunately, Hoku was a born entertainer, or at least the most naturally compulsive as far as entertainers went. “Why hello there, _kaba-han_! I see you have astounding tastes in showy entrances, since you did so to see my show.” Basho and Mon sweated a little from how stilted and wooden Hoku’s delivery of those words was. “I am the great fire puppet ‘ ** _Kugutsu-chi_** ’, and today, I will show you the birth of a new dance!”

The hippo-man Kabatsukai snorted, taking wide steps forward down the aisle towards the stage, brandishing a pair of palm-sized metal rings in his hands. “Well then, by all means, let’s dance, because I got a new style that’s going to blow you right off this stage!” He flicked his wrists to clink the metal rings together into an interlinking chain, which made the turtles gawk a little at how the guy did that without physically splitting the rings.

The guys had to act fast to avoid giving the hippo-man any chance to get suspicious. After all, they did say there was going to be an opening act, so it was time to start acting.

Mon was the first to move the sticks he was holding, causing the puppet to move its legs underneath the lower half of the kimono draped over it, though it did seem a little odd that he would move the legs in a manner that implied a seductive dancer ( _The other three turtles made a mental note to check on what Mon had been watching on TV once they were finished here_ ).

Hoku then manipulated his puppet-sticks to move the arms, making them wave in circles in a way meant to be mystifying.

Basho manipulated his part of the puppet to take control of its head, not simply moving the neck but also its facial features, which were each its own moving part. Basho tweaked the little parts to make the face raise its eyebrows, open its mouth, adjust its cheeks into a smile, and even blink.

Hoku continued to play out the character despite trying to hide the nervous timbre in his voice. “Well, I sure hope you came with 'moderately low’ expectations…” he wrestled through a pause to scramble his brain for a good line, “…because…prepare to have them…strung up?” Everyone was biting their lip.

Fortunately, the plan began to kick in once he got close enough. The scent of female hippo that was sprayed on Hiro's hippo suit earlier had enough time to travel through the air and reach the hippo-man's nose, causing him to pause and take a deep-breathed sniff. The effect was instantaneous.

“ _Maido, misshī_ ,” Kabatsukai greeted suavely, zipping over to Hiro in his hippo suit and making him fall into his arm back first in a dipping position. “Didn’t take you for the stage life. Did you know I’m a magician?”

Hiro was feeling nervously tense about how the hippo got up close to him so fast, so apart from how awkward the hippo’s reaction was making him feel, he didn’t want to give himself away by talking either. He shook his head, making the hippo mask he wore do the same.

Kabatsukai spoke again after getting his answer. “Well, lovely to make your acquaintance, mam. I am, or was, **Mezmer-Ron** , the acclaimed stage magician of Osaka’s central theatre chain, my fame stretching across Chuo and Tennoji,” his voice rapidly dropping into a low mutter, “until recently…”

The hippo-man momentarily reminisced on how well his stage career once was back in his days as Mezmer-Ron, how it flourished with his own theatrical flairs until a lone green-glowing mosquito had drifted in, landed on him, and stung him. It was already unfortunate enough for him to happen while he was in the middle of performing a levitating act on his four-legged assistant, a hippopotamus which he had affectionately named **Kumi**. What became of his body after that was instantaneous and painful – warping, twisting, enlarging every part of him until he looked like some twisted version of his beloved Kumi herself. To rub salt in the wound, he realized he ended up hurting Kumi in his transformation once he came to his senses, to the point that she no longer moved. That scene would haunt him as much as his newfound magical powers would toward his victims.

But now wasn’t the time to be daydreaming. His nose twitched at the whiff of a second new scent, one that set off his newly ingrained territorial aggression. Kabatsukai turned to face the source of the foreign male hippo scent to find himself staring at the tall human-sized kabuki-like puppet standing before him, with its three puppeteers hiding behind it and controlling its every movement. “So then, Kugutsu-chi, not only do you compete against my royalty on the stage, but also in the mating season!” He initially looked like there was going to be bad blood between him and the puppet, but instead of the expected angry look, his face instead lightened into one of casual relaxed superiority. The terrapin puppeteers sans Hiro wondered why he chose to totally subvert expectations when they noticed him shortly pull out his metal rings again. “Why don’t we settle this with a dual performance, one where I cut your wood down to size?”

“ _That’s not gonna raku-go, much less fly_ ,” Hoku whispered under his breathe, feeling tempted with an urge to sweat if not say what he whispered out loud to the hippo-man’s face. 

Kabatsukai, on the other hand, was simply more content with letting his metal rings fly anyway. With a wave of his hands, the chain of distinguishably sharp hoops clinked against one another while floating in the air, spinning at the speeds of chainsaws. Hoku, along with Basho and Mon, had a feeling that a simple ‘dance to the beat of the drum’ wasn’t going to work out, so they figured moving fast would be better. The three leapt in the air to land on the next corner of the show stage as the first ring flew at them and embedded itself in the wooden flooring. Kabatsukai compensated by scattering some more flying metal rings at the puppet, making them roll in the air and skate across the stage flooring again, leaving deep scratch marks all over the wood as they wove through the air to get at the puppet. In a last-second act of improv, Hoku, Basho, and Mon all jumped into the air and assumed a ninja posture, which led to them mimicking that same pose on the puppet, making the puppet look like a ninja master. Kabatsukai threw a couple rings up at the puppet, making the three turtles manipulate the puppet’s parts to dodge the strikes and even deflect a few of them as though the puppet itself was doing the fighting. The puppet landed right in front of him, which led to the two exchanging a tango of flourishing moves as they tried to land a hit on each other.

Hiro thought this was a good time to try and get the jump on the hippo-man, so as he carefully watched his brothers continue to distract the guy with the puppet, he tiptoed around the edge of the fray until he had a clear beeline shot for the magician. He bent his knees and tensed his leg muscles, getting ready to pounce on him when…

*ZING*

Hiro doubled back, nearly falling onto his behind, when an oncoming strike from Basho’s rocket-powered staff swooped in an arc in his direction. Hiro would have most certainly lost his footing if it weren’t for Kabatsukai briefly sniffing and turning around to notice and then slide over to the hippo-disguised snapping turtle, extending an arm to catch him back first. It was a repeat of the same dipping pose from when the magician first arrived, only this time, he was kneeling.

“ _Ikeruya nen, koibito!_ ” Kabatsukai said to Hiro reassuringly with a mock-hero’s tone. “I wouldn’t have known you needed my rescue if it wasn't for my powerful nose…” he leaned in closer to whisper, “…and your lovely scent.”

Hiro gagged silently. “ _Okay. Let's get on with this!_ ” he mentally huffed. Unlocking his hippo mask, Hiro then slipped under and away from Kabatsukai while the magician was busy planting smooches all over the aforementioned mask.

The hippo-magician’s eyes were closed as he did so. It was after a few seconds of that smooching that he noticed his would-be missus wasn't responsive. He cracked open an eye to take a peek, then snapped both wide open when he realized he was smooching only a hippo head in his hands.

“Gah!” he yelped loudly at the sudden sight, driving him to look the head over in all directions, simultaneously turning the empty mask and scanning with his eyes at every angle of the mask. It was after he took a look at the clean hole at the bottom and then over to the now unmasked Hiro standing alongside his black clad brothers who revealed themselves from behind the puppet. His face morphed from shock to disappointment. “Aw phooey! The old false Ginny trick got pulled over my eyes!” he commented out loud in a harrumph, then sighed. “I gotta say that this has been the worst mating season all year.” Without any further fuss, he went back to unleashing more of his magically levitating rings. “Oh well, not like you were Kumi anyway!”

“Now that is one fine-dressed and gentlemanly mutant!” Hoku resumed his signature compulsion for quipping. The four turtles were stoked for a smackdown at that point.

“Alright guys, let's smash this big-snout!” Hiro rallied his brothers before they all dashed to take a swipe at the magician.

The four then made their first move, with Hiro reading his Tonfas and the other three still operating the bunraku puppet. Learning from fighting the puppet earlier, Kabatsukai flourished a trio of rings that made a swirling motion around the puppet that culminated in an erratic tornado-like dance of flying audible dings. The guys were only able to make the puppet fend off just two ring strikes when they were rapidly overwhelmed, forcing the three to split and leave the puppet to be eviscerated to pieces by the rest of the metal rings. They took advantage of the magician’s concentration on destroying the puppet to try and deliver some of their signature moves.

Mon spun his Kusari-fundo chain to try and ensnare the hippo. Basho activated an electric-powered stun feature in his staff to deliver an attempted taser attack. Hoku came down with his sword over his head to slash at any flying rings in his way, plus the hope that he could knock off the magician’s pink turban. Hiro went with the good old-fashioned smash-and-dash with his Tonfas.

The hippo-magician proved remarkably adept at paying attention to his foes’ attacks, as if that was any surprise at all. He only had to surround himself in his flying metal rings that acted as his own blades to shield himself as he took a bit of time to get a look at all his blind spots. He did some jumps and backflips of his own as he dodged the turtles’ hampered strikes, even fitting in a few midair spins. Apart from slapping away Hoku’s sword strikes and Basho’s electrified staff swings with his intercepting rings, he made a carefully timed jump just when Hiro smashed a magic-charged Tonfa punch into the planked floor, shattering the wood until there was a splintered hole in the middle of the stage. When the chain from Mon’s weapon managed to find its mark and coil around the magician’s large body, Kabatsukai only got on one foot and did a ballerina spin in the opposite direction of Mon’s chain, making the chain widen just enough for him to jump out of the fiery loop, doing a graceful pose in the process.

Mon felt a little miffed at how the hippo got out of his trap so cleverly, so after spotting Hiro’s discarded hippo mask at the rear corner of the stage, he leapt over to seize it with the intent of slam-dunking it on the magician’s head like a double-ironic blinder. He prepped himself by jumping onto the set pieces that stood at the back of the stage, no doubt left over from the last performance staged by the theatre’s human performers. He made it to the top and jumped off in the hippo’s direction.

At the same moment, Kabatsukai took aim at the turtles coming at him from all sides. He smirked, since as a magician, he still had one card up his sleeve, one that he had kept hidden up to this point. Opening his hippo maw wide open, he let out a loud and drawn out shout that sounded like a hollow echo, saying, “MEZMER-ROOOOOOOONNN!” The turtles were stopped in midair by the magician’s resounding voice, briefly expressing bewilderment at how this was happening before the pupils in their eyes were replaced by psychedelic swirls. As soon as that happened, the guys instantly fell into a hypnotic trance, helpless before the hippo-man.

Kabatsukai gave a malicious victory laugh as he looked upon the turtles’ defenseless state, feeling the rush from now getting to take his time with them. “Now then, which one of you should I do my half-and-half trick on first?” He examined his potential victims carefully. “Should I go with Playful Purple?” he mused out loud while pointing at Basho. “Baby Blue?” he then pointed at Hoku. His hand moved away from Hoku and past Mon, who was holding the discarded hippo mask in both hands in front of his face, until his attention rested on Hiro who was still dressed in the rest of the hippo costume. “Oh yes,” he sneered with a twisted grin, “I think I'll start with you, Big Red, or should I call you, Ugly Trickster?” Kabatsukai flicked out one extra metal ring from his sleeve and held it next to Hiro's neck, the sharp hoop of metal spinning rapidly with an intent to fatal cut and slice as its wielder slowly inched it closer and closer to the hypnotized snapping turtle's jugular.

He got extremely close to doing something bad to Hiro's neck when he was suddenly startled by the sight of something hollow being slam-dunked over his head, rendering his vision completely black. “Wha–!?” he cried, now flailing his hands around in confusion. “ _Donata-han ga akari o keshi-tachi ~yuu wakeya ka?_ ”

It didn't take long for him to find what was around his head, however. He grabbed at the thing over his head and yanked it off, returning his vision to the theatre stage he stood on and finding in his hands the same hippo mask he handled earlier. To his chagrin, he also noticed the little orange-masked turtle – Mon – clambering onto his still-hypnotized and levitating brothers, trying to shake then by their faces to make them come back to their senses. “You’re not hypnotized?” Kabatsukai exclaimed with a loud shock, “But…how!?”

“Uh…” Mon held his voice as he tried to answer.

_It took a second of gathering his thoughts, but Mon remembered having felt the wavy and kinetic magic energy surrounding him when Kabatsukai sounded his hypnotizing voice. He acutely remembered that power being enough to hold him up in the air when he was in mid-jump, but he most certainly was having clear thoughts. When he turned his head to look around in order to make sense of what just happened, he had a really good idea of it upon noticing his brothers looking rather loopy, both in how their eyes changed into spirals and how slackjawed and quiet they were. It then dawned on him that the reason he was like that was thanks to the hippo mask he held right in front of his face at that moment, which not only protected him, but also reminded of his intent to plonk the thing onto the mutant hippo from the very beginning._

“Well, I guess I will say that you’re definitely the slippery one,” said Kabatsukai, who prepared to unleash another set of flying rings, though he levitated then between his hands for the moment. “ _Chikara o kanjiru junbi o shina hare!_ ”

Mon, at that moment, felt absolutely sure that he was going to need a new plan of his own, and it was going to need a little bit of time. He dashed as the rings began flying at him, unable to do anything but play keep-away with the hippo magically for the time being. He did recall on the fly that he escaped being hypnotized because he didn't see Kabatsukai when he attacked, so he looked everywhere the hippo wasn’t. But then things started going south for him when his path was intercepted by a metal ring that zipped by in front of him so fast that he almost fell backwards. He looked all around to find that the hippo had surrounded him in rapidly moving rings, forcing Mon to stay in place lest he make a move and get cut by any one of the rings.

“ _Jikkō yaru basho ga hen_ , little orange,” Kabatsukai taunted Mon as he slowly closed the circle formed by the rings, making it smaller and move closer to the littlest turtle. “Get ready for my next trick where I make you disappear.” With that said, he got ready to slice up the box turtle in an increased speed.

But Mon did the one thing he could think of, which was to fling the chain of his Kusari-fundo upwards at the stage rafters and grapple it on one of the metal beams, then pull himself up and out of the ring trap, ascending into the scaffolding and perching himself high above the magician’s reach. Mon would have resumed panicking over what to do next, but he thought of something once he took notice of the spotlights hanging on the framed beam he perched on.

“Time to put some space between you,” came Kabatsukai’s arranged pre-mortem one-liner, flinging a set of three rings right at Mon above.

But just as the rings arced and zeroed in on the little turtle, Mon had already gotten a hold of a couple spotlights. Mon did a jumping flip when the rings came and dinged along the metal-framed beam and landed back down on it. As soon as he did, he whipped the chain ball of his weapon directly towards an electrical wall panel down below, flipping a light switch. The spotlights flashed on, shooting a pair of intense and concentrated beams of light directly into the hippo-mutant’s face, making him yelp painfully as he stopped what he was doing to shield his eyes from the blinding light with his hands. As he preoccupied himself with that, he didn’t notice Mon swooping back down to retry his binding trick on him, this time successfully winding the chain around the magician’s large body and throwing him up into the air before slamming him down onto the red-cushioned audience seats just at the foot of the stage. 

Kabatsukai recovered from the mess of shattered seats he was lying down on to face the orange-masked turtle standing on the stage above him, looking down on him with a smug look on his face. Seeing that made him mad.

“That’s it!” he yelled as he got back on his feet, stomping on a shattered backrest as he took a deep snort-rumbling breath and shouted, “MEZMER-ROOOOOOOONNN!” Just like before, the hypnotizing soundwaves flew out of his mouth towards his target with the intent of putting him in a trance alongside his brothers.

However, what he wasn’t paying attention to was that Mon, in that same instant, had raised a couple of spotlight lenses he had popped off another pair of neighboring spotlights earlier. He held the two curved pieces of glass together as one in that short time it took for the magician's voice to reach him. In that same moment, the traveling soundwaves collided with the lens and bounced off of it, sending them back the exact opposite direction of their source, returning to their sender.

Kabatsukai didn't know what hit him, not that he could. The hypnotic voice that was sent right back at him put him right into the same trance as the other three turtles he had done it to earlier. His knees buckled and he fell right down onto a sitting position, his eyes swirling in complete unawareness as he fell victim to his own hypnosis.

At the same time, the hypnotic trance that Mon's brothers were under vanished instantly, awareness completely returning to their vision as their eyes reverted back from spirals to iris and pupils. It also had the additional effect of ceasing their immobilizing levitation, allowing them to set their feet back down onto the planked stage floor.

Basho was the first one to find his voice again after coming back to his senses. “Huh? Now what happened here?”

“Yeah! Did we just win?” Hoku joined his brother’s inquiry.

Mon nodded his heads while giving a victorious grin with his hands on his hips. “Uh-huh, and you’re welcome, by the way.”

Hiro was quick to congratulate his littlest brother. “ _Yōya sooya de ~e, Mon!_ Couldn't have made it without you!” He went over and have Mon a heartfelt pat on the shoulder, to which Mon received warmly. Hiro then went on to fiddle with the hippo suit still around his person. “Finally! I can get out of this thing! It's gotten so hot in there!”

“Hey wait, Hiro!” Hoku interjected before Hiro could go further with undressing. “I don't think that costume's so bad on you.” He stepped closer to the snapping turtle to look over the costume. “If anything, it makes me proud I got your size just right.”

“Yeah. Not to mention it does a good job keeping all your emotions in,” Hoku cut in jokingly.

“Hoku, come on!” Mon huffed disappointedly, with Hiro showing a face of similar dismay behind him.

“What?” Hoku held up his hands in surrender, “Is it wrong that I don't want to smell what Hiro's feeling all the time?”

None of the three other turtles had time to idle and come up with a retort when the distant and muffled sounds of a crowd of humans reached their ears, making them trace the origin of the voices to the back of the auditorium, which was where the main entrance and lobby of the theatre was.

“Guys?” Basho spoke up in time to see the humans rapidly peek through the hole Kabatsukai had made to see the turtles still standing on the stage.

“Look!” came the calling voice of one human who pointed at the turtles for the others to see. “It's gotta be the mysterious new entertainer that's been shown on the internet!” The guys were then bombarded by another unexpected question. “What are you guys showing?”

“…” The guys exchanged tensed wordless glances with each other, rapidly beginning to sweat all the more intensely. Luckily, Hiro always made a plan. “Uh…Actually,” Hiro yelled over to the approaching humans, “Show’s over! You missed it! Sorry!” He made sure to give a polite, though awkward smile, which his brothers imitated in turn.

The humans at the back appeared to look a little disappointed. “But…” one of them began to object.

“Guys! Smoke bombs!” Hiro hurriedly exclaimed to his brothers. This time, none of the guys fumbled on that part of the plan. Before the humans could step inside the auditorium and get closer to the scene…

*POOF*

The humans were speechless, astounded at how the turtles vanished from the stage the moment the smoke clouds dissipated. But despite the initial confusion, they showed no hesitation in drawing out their phones and texting everything they saw as they walked back out the theatre and talked among themselves.

No doubt Uzuki was going to be talking to the guys about this…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New mutant: Introducing the hippo stage magician and hypnotist, "Kabatsukai" (カバツカイ|カバ使い), Osaka’s – and Japan’s – very own ‘Hypno-potamus’. Back when he was a human stage magician, he went by the stage-name ‘Mezmer-Ron’ (メズマロン) who performed with his pet girl-hippopotamus 'Kumi' (久美), who is the counterpart to 'Doug'. Together, they were an inseparable magical duo, at least until the magician’s mutation. His new name is a portmanteau of the terms ‘kaba’ (カバ ‘hippo’) and ‘mahōtsukai’ (魔法使い ‘magician/wizard’). 
> 
> Osaka Shochikuza Theatre (大阪松竹座) is a theater in the Dotonbori district of Osaka that first opened in 1923. Its design is meant to emulate a Neo-Renaissance style, modelled particularly after the 'Teatro alla Scala' in Milan, Italy. When it was first built, it started out as both a movie theater and a venue for musicals. Today, it’s known for staging classical Kabuki drama, along with new contemporary dramas, musicals, comedies, and opera.
> 
> The National Bunraku Theatre (国立文楽劇場) is an arts venue that opened in 1984. It was built specifically to host and preserve the traditional bunraku art. It is not only an entertainment venue, but also has both training facilities for performers and a museum/archive for historical materials rolled in one. It is, for all intents and purposes, a cultural heritage center.
> 
> Bunraku (文楽), also known as 'Ningyō-Jōruri' (人形浄瑠璃), is a form of traditional Japanese puppet theatre, combining puppet-acting with chanting and instrumental music. It’s basically what you get when you combine a run-of-the-mill puppet show with larger-scale stage aesthetics. It was invented in Osaka at the beginning of the 17th century when the playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon (近松 門左衛門) did a collaboration with the chanter Takemoto Gidayu (竹本 義太夫). The term “Ningyō-Jōruri” is such because the combination of chanting and shamisen playing is called ‘jōruri’ (浄瑠璃) and the Japanese word for puppet is ‘ningyō’ (人形), which is synonymous with dolls. In bunraku, there are 3 kinds of performers: the 'Ningyōtsukai/Ningyōzukai' (人形遣い｜人形使い - puppeteers), the 'Tayū' (太夫 - chanters), and shamisen musicians (The shamisen -三味線- is a traditional Japanese string instrument that’s based off the Chinese lute). All but the most minor puppet characters are controlled by 3 puppeteers, who are completely visible to the audience. These puppeteers generally wear black robes, though in most traditions, they also wear black hoods over their heads. There are a few exceptions, such as in the National Bunraku Theatre, who leave the main puppeteer unhooded. This is a performance style known as ‘dezukai’.
> 
> Dialect Phrases:  
> Min'na, yametenka (みんな、やめてんか): “Everyone, stop that!” | Standard: Min'na, yamete (みんな、やめて)  
> Kan'nin'na, nīchan (堪忍な、兄ちゃん): “Sorry, big bro.” | Standard: Gomen ne, nīsan (ごめんね、兄さん)  
> Kōhatsu-sha o mattoru tte ki wa shaanai (後発者を待っとるってきはしゃーない): “I can’t help it when waiting for a latecomer.” | Standard: Kōhatsu-sha o matte iru toki wa shikataganai (後発者を待っているときは仕方がない)  
> Nan (なん): “What?” | Standard: Nani (何)  
> Kaba-han (カバはん): “Mr. Hippo” | Standard: Kaba-san (カバさん)  
> Maido, misshī (まいど、ミッシー): “Hey there, Missy” | Standard: Kon'nichiwa, misshī (こんにちは、ミッシー)  
> Ikeruya nen, koibito (いけるやねん、恋人): “It’s alright, my sweet!” | Standard: Daijōbudesu, koibito (大丈夫です、恋人)  
> Donata-han ga akari o keshi-tachi ~yuu wakeya ka (どなたはんが明かりを消したちゅうワケやか): “Who turned out the lights?” | Standard: Dare ga akari o keshita nodesu ka (誰が明かりを消したのですか)  
> Chikara o kanjiru junbi o shina hare (力を感じる準備をしなはれ): “Get ready to feel the power!” | Standard: Chikara o kanjiru junbi o shi nasai (力を感じる準備をしなさい)  
> Jikkō yaru basho ga hen (実行やる場所がへん): “Nowhere to run” | Standard: Jikkō suru basho ga nai (実行する場所がない)  
> Yōya sooya de ~e, Mon (ようやそーやでぇ、モン): “Great job, Mon!” | Standard: Yoku yatta, Mon (よくやった、モン)
> 
> * Hoku’s puppet name “Kugutsu-chi” is a pun on “Kagutsuchi” (カグツチ), the primordial Shinto god of destructive fire. Hoku also makes mention of “rakugo” (落語), which is Japanese stand-up comedy that involves the comedian sitting down (Ironic!) in the middle of the stage with only a paper fan and hand towel for props in both hands while telling a long-winded, complicated, but funny story.


	10. Yonotsune, You Don't Say

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, I will: Introduce a new character, bring rat dad back into the mix, and sprinkle a bit of lore about the setting.
> 
> Here are some terms that will pop up here:  
> Izakaya (居酒屋): a Japanese bar that serves as a place for casual drinking, usually serves customers over the counter nowadays  
> Hiningenteki-jin (非人間的人): inhuman people  
> Ningen'igai-jin (人間以外人): nonhuman people  
> Yonotsune (世の常): “always in the world”, otherwise meaning – usual/ordinary/run-of-the-mill  
> Irori (囲炉裏): hearth, fireplace  
> Hachimeika (八眼イカ): eight-eyed squid/calamari  
> Jūmetako (十眼タコ): ten-eyed octopus
> 
> The supernatural creatures in this chapter, and the story overall, are confirmed to indeed be the Yōkai (妖怪), just like in the original show. Also, this version of the Hidden City has a name: “Saikyōkai” (西京界), which combines the terms ‘Saikyō’ (西京 – west capital) and ‘Kai’ (界 – kingdom, land, realm), considering where it is in Japan geographically. (If you look closely at the name, you can find the word ‘Yōkai’ in it. Take a minute and see how it fits.)
> 
> (P.S. - this info was originally in the end notes, but I moved them up here because there was too much down there)

Down in the sewers of Osaka, in a section of the network repurposed as a lair home for a family of mutants, four turtles were chilling after another arduous day.

Hiro was lying on his spiky-shelled back on a beanbag as he stared up into the concrete ceiling of the lair’s main hub. “Well, I think that was another night of good work, everyone!” He tilted his head in Basho’s direction. “What’s our score count on mosquitoes we caught?”

Basho didn’t bother looking back at his brother but obliged to check his digital counter without any unnecessary fuss. “Well, let me check.” He pressed a few keys. “Calculating…we are at: Zero.”

Hiro didn’t have anything to say at the moment, but instead opted to hammer the back of his head back down on the beanbag, resuming his stare at the ceiling. “Man!” he groaned loudly, lifting his hands in bewilderment. “How is it so hard to find even one pesky glowing bug in the middle of Osaka? It shouldn’t even be hard to spot, right?”

“In a city filled to the brim with lights, noises, and plenty of colors, sure it’s totally easy,” Basho rolled his eyes in response. He humorously held up a photo of the average Osaka nightlife on his phone in front of Hiro’s face for good measure. Hiro felt something come up his throat as he got ready to say something back to his purple-masked brother, but immediately swallowed it back down.

“Hey guys, I know we’re trying to work on saving the city from mosquitoes making more mutants,” Mon piped up, “but it’s getting kinda tiring right now. How about something fun for a break?” He was lounging on the neighboring ledge just above the rest of his brothers.

“I second that suggestion,” Hoku raised a hand, feeling the desire for a laxer activity schedule as well. “We’ve been all over the city and we haven’t stopped at any of the good spots. Like, really stopped for the good parts of town. I’ve been dying to check if that new ride at **Universal Studios Japan** opened yet.”

Hiro fidgeted on his bean bag. “Well, sure guys. I know we’re kinda tired, but those bugs are still flying out there, possibly about to make another mutant as we’re talking. Maybe we shouldn’t be slowing down right now.”

“Okay, so why are you still talking then?” Basho responded while tapping away at his phone.

Hiro blinked a couple times. “Okay, you got a point. So, what’s good in the city right now?”

Mon was actually the first one to speak up, despite him drawing out his phone a while after Basho did. “I know! How about we check out that izakaya joint across the street from **Kuromon Market**? I know dad likes those kinds of stuff.”

“ _Zettai chau_ , buddy,” Hoku lightly tapped a finger on his little brother’s head. “That kind of stuff’s what only dad likes, and also what only dad can have. We can’t have that, so you can’t either.” He took a second to observe the pouty pushed-lower lip expression Mon had on his face.

The sounds of light pitter-patter footsteps from behind the group interrupted their discussion, making them turn their heads to see their dad Mokuhen himself walking in on their talk. “Well, hey there, my boys,” he greeted them in his trademark 'round fun’ persona, “Were you all talking about something fun?”

The boys didn't know what to say for a second; after all, it wasn't like their dad ever got himself involved in their usually harebrained discussions on a regular basis. “Uh…yeah dad,” Hiro answered their rat dad for the rest of the group, “just talking about getting a night out…no need to get worried about us. Right guys?” he asked the other three turtles for a bit of confirmation to keep this somewhat awkward encounter as short as possible.

But of course, Mokuhen knew ways to subvert their expectations without getting even a word from them. “Well you know,” he began, twiddling a few hairs of his beard between a finger and thumb, “if you're looking for some place to get back in good spirits, the fun always comes together in **Shinsekai**.”

The turtles all thought about their dad’s recommendation once they heard it, and quickly, they found themselves agreeing. “Yeah. Yeah, you're right! Shinsekai's the place where everyone comes together to play nice,” Hiro made his recollection out loud. “What do you say, guys? Is Shinsekai our fun spot tonight?” The response was one of collective unanimous agreement. At least until their dad spoke up again, surprisingly not as quick to end his conversation with his sons as he usually did.

“I had a good feeling you would say yes to that,” Mokuhen remarked jauntily. He then began walking to a ledge and jumping up onto the next one above, doing the same on a couple more until he was well above the turtles and on his way to the surface. Once again, such a display of physical prowess had caught the turtles’ eyes by surprise.

“Uh, where are you going?” Hoku asked the rat from below.

“To Shinsekai, of course,” Mokuhen replied with nary a speck of curiosity towards his son’s question disguised as protest. “You thought I was going to sit at home all day?” Without waiting for an answer, he hightailed out of the lair’s main exit further up, only stopping to look back down at the boys one more time. “Well?” he called out, “Are you coming or not?”

Before answering, all four of the guys exchanged glances with one another. This was totally not the night out they had in mind…

* * *

It wasn’t too bad once everyone reached the Shinsekai area itself. The area was as lively as the last time they had visited it. Here, old met new, retro met modern, and the past and present held hands to create a colorful future. It could be said that every sort of person living in Osaka came together at Shinsekai, like how all animals converge at the watering hole. The turtles made it across the next rooftop of a neighboring glitzy building when they noticed Mokuhen going another direction.

“ _Ojin_ , where are you going?” Hiro spoke up before the rat went any further.

“Going out and having a good time,” the rat answered without looking back, not once dropping his casual tone. “Don’t let me keep you.” With that, he jumped and dropped down into the alleyway in front of him.

The turtles silently looked at one another and shrugged their shoulders. If their dad was letting them do their own thing while he did his, they may as well go all out. But for the moment, there wasn't anything else to do right now except take a look around the neighborhood and see what's up. After about an hour, they had looked at every available fun spot and gathered together to discuss their choices.

“Anywhere good enough to check out first, guys?” Hiro asked first, being the leader and all.

The other three turtles shrugged their shoulders, seemingly at a loss at what to consider a general consensus. “I dunno, bro. They all have similar menus anyway, and the game shops haven't gotten upgraded yet,” said Mon.

“Well, hearing that, I'm going to do something I should've done from the start that would've saved us on time,” Basho announced reflexively. Unlocking a panel on the gadget-laden backpack on his shell, a small satellite-looking device unfolded and rotated, scanning all of Shinsekai for better results. For the first several minutes, the scanner pinged as it did its analysis, but no results were displayed on the screen yet. Basho seemed to be aware of the amount of time his scanner was taking to produce data, but being its creator, he was the first to exercise the most patience. “Well, guess that means I have to touch it up a bit…” he offhandedly remarked.

Hoku had other ideas. “Let me help with that,” he interrupted, grabbing the little machine and pulling it toward himself, pulling Basho’s pack with it as they both were still attached.

The suddenness of such jerky motions sent Basho into a mood of instant displeasure. “Hey! Hoku! _Uchi no yayako kara te ~e o hanashite!_ ” he yelled at his younger blue-masked brother, flailing his own two arms in the other turtle’s direction.

“It'll only take a second, bro! Chillax!” Hoku said more calmly, keeping the machine out of Basho’s reach. As he wrestled with his brother, he held the device in every other direction until it suddenly pinged loudly and showed an unusual image on the accompanying screen. “ _Korenan'nan?_ ” he inquisitively examined the gadget’s display. Him looking closer to see what was shown also prompted his brothers to join in on the eyeballing. The screen was showing a live camera shot of the Shinsekai area, albeit displayed in a purple-tinted and slightly grainy filter, but in a corner of the display, there was a very bright spot that, when examined closely, looked like a stylized glyph-like 'M', which was nestled on the wall of a random building.

“Whoa!” Mon gasped. “Another one of those mystic marks is here too?”

“Gee, and I thought not everything comes together in Shinsekai,” Hiro quipped. “Does that lead to the 'Hidden City' where all the weird creatures live? When's the last time we've been there?”

“Well, that would be when we and Uzuki went down there for the first time to save Docha the magic dog-cat,” Basho answered first, “so we've been there only one time.”

Hiro felt Mon jump onto his arm. “Ohh! Hiro, are we gonna go back to that underground city?” He was exceptionally giddy about the prospect. “That’d be the funnest night ever!”

Hiro thought about Mon's question. A second trip to the amazing underground city would be great. The mysticism behind its wonder wowed the guys the first time they saw it, and even though they only had about a minute to take it all in, deep down, they already wanted more. Besides, it was refreshing and delightful to meet other people who weren't humans, besides their dad. “You know what? I agree! Let’s go check it out!” After a collective nod of approval from everyone, Hiro led his brothers to where the glowing mark was located.

Landing on the ground after jumping from the neighboring rooftop, the guys stopped right in front of the wall where Basho’s scanner picked up the residual magic sigil. “Okay fellas,” Hiro said, sounding refreshingly confident, “You ready for this? We gotta make a good impression on the _hiningenteki-jin_.”

“Well, first of all, big bro,” Basho mentioned, “it’s ‘ _ningen'igai-jin_ ’, and second, how are we gonna open this portal? Last I checked, the little trinket-thing from last time got broken,” he snuck a glance at Mon who looked back at him innocently, “and no one had a plan to snatch one more like it before we left.”

“Well, how about we just look at the scanner and retrace the ‘M’ from there?” Mon suggested without a nary of stress. “We could always let the artist’s touch do its work again.” Upon referencing his accomplishment from the last time, he pulled out a marker from one of the miniature fanny packs hanging on his belt. He then walked up to the wall and retraced the ‘M’, then waited once he was done. Nothing happened. Mon took note of the three pairs of eyes watching him from behind, innocently holding up his hands with a sweaty smile. “Well…maybe we’re dealing with a different wall here.”

But Mon was shortly interrupted from behind, startling him as he and the others turned to find that the wall suddenly opened up, a circular ring of light spreading across the surface to reveal something behind it. Apart from the warm lighting and evidence of a gathered number of life forms within, the first thing everyone saw was a figure walking on a pair of slender legs.

At first glance, the person walking out and towards the guys was wearing an outfit that obviously appeared in traditional Japanese style, but said outfit had a design that was so subtly altered that even the turtles though it was fashionable. There was a pair of brown long-legged pants that was tied at the waist with a red braided cord and its legs were so roomy that when put side-by-side, resembled a skirt – this was identified as an _umanori-hakama_. The top was composed of a dark-red long-sleeved v-collar shirt overlaid with an orange thin-layered light jacket with spacy short sleeves – the jacket was designed like a _happi_ and was tied closed over the dark-red shirt underneath with an _obi_ -sash the width of two human forearms put together side-by-side. But what got the turtles’ attention even more was the wearer of that outfit. While the wearer was human-shaped, it turned out to be a walking human skeleton, composed entirely of bones save for a head of raven-black hair on top of the skull tied back in a simple ponytail.

The traditionally dressed skeleton momentarily exchanged stares with the four turtles before breaking the ice of awkward silence, apart from the circular portal she exited closing behind her. “Hello? Can I help you?” the skeleton asked with a graceful voice that told the turtles it was a woman.

It took a few seconds, but hearing her gave the guys the push needed to get the talking part of their brains back into working order. Hiro was first, already knowing what he was going to say. “AAAHHHH!! _ANDEDDO NINGEN YA!_ ” he screamed, pointing at the lady. But he was promptly silenced by that lady leaping right at him and slapping a hand over his mouth.

“ _Ōi, shizukani!_ ” the skeleton-woman whispered harshly, keeping her hand on Hiro’s mouth until the snapping turtle’s squeaky breathing calmed down, “ _You want humans finding this place?_ ” She waited until Hiro shook his head. Once she was sure no attention was drawn from either end of the alleyway everyone stood in, she released her grip from Hiro’s face. “Okay then,” she recollected herself from her brief digression, letting out a rough sigh, “Now that that’s over, back to my main question. Were you trying to get in?”

Hiro held his breath for a second but then exhaled, slumping his shoulders and sighing with a fluster. “Yeah.”

The skeleton-woman relaxed, crossing her arms in front of her chest while leaning back against the wall, allowing for quiet once again. “I see. I’m guessing you don’t have the usual pass for accessing the underground, huh?” She stopped for a second to gather her next words, but didn’t allow time for the turtles to speak when she continued. “Well, this place isn’t actually underground. It’s very close to ground level.” Seeing the guys’ faces change to an expression of intrigue, she turned around to face the wall. “And also…” She lifted up a finger to touch the wall, causing the circular portal to open up again. “…It’s easy access. Touch to open, boys.” She walked right back inside right as the boys were gaping in awe before they followed in after her.

Upon passing through the portal, the boys came face-to-face with a place teeming and bustling with life. The skeleton woman spoke again, “ ** _Yonotsune-Irori_** _e yōkoso_.”

From corner to corner, the first floor and second floor above, there were fantastical creatures of many different shapes and sizes. Some looked like they were based on existing animals, just like the turtles were. Others were more formless, such as ones made of inorganic substances or even looking like no more than blobs of slime. There were even a number of creatures that were organic but had proportions too outrageous to resemble any earth creature, such as elongated limbs and multiple eyes among other traits.

As for the place itself, it appeared to be some kind of restaurant, being lined from end to end, corner to corner, with dining tables and accompanied seating of various varieties. Most of them appeared to be traditionally Japanese, with the cushions for seats and the low tables sitting on tatami carpeting and surrounded by rice paper sliding doors arranged like cubicles for complete privacy, though these spaces lacked their own roofs or ceilings. But in other parts of the space, there was also the classic Western-styled tables, most of them round and covered with white tablecloths while accompanied with chairs, completely open to the rest of the establishment. The rest of the dining area was still predominantly in the traditional Japanese style, evident in the columns, lighting, and the second floor’s railings, among other details.

All four of the guys were starry-eyed as they got to see, for the second time ever, so many civilized nonhumans right in front of them. Once again, but even more firmly this time, the turtles were looking at the absolute revelation that they, as nonhumans, were not alone in Osaka. Sure, the humans were receptive as long as they were easily fooled, but this was different, better even.

“Wow!” Mon gasped excitedly, “This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen!”

“Wuh-hoh! Look at that! New faces, guys!” Hoku seconded his little brother’s amazement.

“This opens up a whole new world of possibilities,” Basho added in kind.

Hiro was too taken in by the sight to say anything, simply opting to look it over again and again in wondrous curiosity, with a ton of questions going through his mind about how all this was possible, or rather, how all this existed without him and his brothers knowing until now.

“Well? Are you done gawking? Why don’t you take a seat?”

The brothers were snapped out of their amazed stupor to look at the skeleton woman who interrupted them from their thoughts. Hearing her question, they didn’t object but answered her with a nod. She nodded back and motioned with her head and one of her hands. “This way, then.” She turned to walk down an aisle that was lined with tables on both sides. The walk was rather slow, as she took her time allowing the boys the maximum scenic experience. Hearing nothing but the voices of all the other patrons of the establishment, the skeleton woman decided to break the ice further. “I take it this is your first time here?”

Hiro was the first one to take lead of the conversation this time. “Yeah. Yeah, this is our first time. Cool setup, this place has got.”

“It sure is,” the skeleton woman nodded. “Most Yōkai normally stick with what's in Saikyōkai, but the ones who come here are more of the daring adventurous type, given how it's right at the surface in the middle of Osaka, where all the humans are.”

“ **Saikyōkai**?” Basho was the next to speak up. “Where’s that?”

“Are you telling me that none of you are from the Yōkai capital?” asked the skeleton woman. “Well, then again, not all Yōkai live in Japan. It's the main city deep underground right below Osaka, but it's also got neighbors.” The turtles realized what that was after hearing that description, confirming the name of the hidden city they visited once before, not to mention that the creatures they saw all around them held the name of **Yōkai** , something reserved for the fantastical creatures of their home country.

The lady stopped a moment when she spotted a young feline waiter at one part of the restaurant near one of the round open tables. “ _Nē_ ,” she called to that waiter after walking up to him and tapping him on the shoulder, speaking firmly but reasonably, “ _Karera no chūmon o kakunin suru tame ni ichidodake kokyaku ni tazuneru hitsuyō ga. Karera no jikan o mudanishinai._ ” When the waiter answered her with a nod, she then turned and resumed her tour with the turtles.

“Hold on. You work here?” Mon piped up after observing her.

The lady turned to the little box turtle. “Yes, I do.”

Hoku thought it was a good time to take his turn to talk to the lady. “Well, either way, this place is really Shinsekai material. Definitely a one-of-a-kind mishmash.” He had to stifle a loud gulp when he saw her turn around to look him in the eye with a slightly offended gaze. “The good kind!” he clarified frantically, keeping his signature toothy smile plastered on his face. “I meant the good kind.”

The lady appeared to take his comment in stride. “Well, that's part of working in Shinsekai. There's a little bit of everything in one thing.”

Along the way, she found herself approached by a really short Yōkai made of a light green slime. “ _Hone-san, mokari makka?_ ” he greeted her.

The skeleton woman, apparently addressed as **Hone-san** , looked down to face him and smiled back. “ _O kake-sa made genkidesu_. Just introducing some new guests to the place. How did it go with that anniversary couple?”

“Oh, it went fabulously,” the green slime midget answered jovially. “They really had a good laugh when I showed them my 'party act'. No worries, I cleaned it all up after.”

Hone-san nodded with a little smile. “Good to hear it went well. Let's keep it up.” Once she got his affirmation, they both parted ways. After a little bit more touring of the lively restaurant, in its aesthetics, varieties of served foods seen, and its greater variety of customers, she led the guys to one of the traditional cubicles marked by a sliding door, stopping in front of it. “Alright, boys. Apart from going around to give you a tour of the place, I was looking for an empty table to seat you. But tonight's apparently a full-house, so do you mind if I have someone share their table with you?”

Not wanting to complicate things unnecessarily when they were already in a good mood, the guys nodded, telling her yes. Without further delay, Hone-san grabbed the sliding door and pulled out open, exposing a rather familiar figure. The guys didn't even need to wait for the lone patron sitting on the cushion in front of the low table to turn around for them to recognize him. At the same time, the patron turned around to face the turtles when he heard the sliding door open.

“Dad!?” the four boys exclaimed gaspingly.

“Boys!?” Mokuhen cried, the suddenness of finding his sons where he least expected them enough to make him momentarily spring up into the air right above his cushion, even flailing his limbs a bit before he came back down again. “What are you doing here!?”

“What are **_you_** doing here?” Basho asked back.

“Eating out,” Mokuhen answered. “This is the only place in Shinsekai that serves _hachimeika_.”

“And you went without us?” Mon pointed a finger.

Mokuhen leaned backwards against the table, resting an elbow on the edge while his feet were spread over the cushion. “Well, would you like it if I followed you wherever you went for fun?” he said more calmly.

“ _Well, we weren't following you…_ ” Hoku muttered quietly out of his dad's hearing range.

“Hmm, so you know each other?” Hone-san remarked. “Do you four still want this table?” She observed the guys appearing somewhat on the fence about the question.

“Well…” Hiro told her, “if there are no other tables with just one person…”

“It's fine, Hone-san,” Mokuhen cut in, “they can join me.” He turned to look at the turtles with a softer expression in his eyes. “Is that okay with you?”

The guys exchanged glances with each other momentarily, but then lightened up. “Sure, _Ojin_. Why not?” said Hiro with an innocent smile. With that, everyone walked into the space and took a start around the table, though with Hiro, he had to squeeze a little bit on his designated cushion.

Mokuhen exhaled in playful resignation once the boys were completely settled in. “Well then, who would've thought just an old man and his boys' two outings would end with one combined night out together after all?”

“I know, right?” Mon chimed. “It’s like all of us were meant to go out together like this.”

“Or it’s just serendipity that we came to the one place in Osaka that takes in folks like us,” Basho refuted, earning a pouty look from Mon in turn.

Hone-san thought it a good time to cut in. “Just so you know, the menus are in the middle of the table,” she said, pointing at the neatly stacked pile of folded menus, “Someone will be over later to take your order,” she then turned to look at Mokuhen dead in the eye, leaning on the frame of the sliding door “so do refrain from calling other busy servers while you’re waiting, _onegai_.”

“That’s good to know,” Mokuhen said curtly with a faint scowl, making a point of keeping his eyes on the boys instead of Hone-san. “Boys, what do we say to this nice lady who’s serving us this one-of-a-kind experience?” Funnily enough, the rat-man was still concentrated on eating his octo-eyed calamari as he was casually, but non-dismissively, talking.

The boys got the hint, though they felt slightly annoyed at how their dad asked them this question like it was their first time ever. “ _Ōkini, Hone-san (han)_ ,” they said to the skeleton-lady in unison.

Hone-san initially gave a little bow as a warm reception to the words of gratitude given to her, though she did shift her focus over to Hoku to address one little detail. “ _Dōitashimashite_. Just remember that in this place, I go by ‘ _san_ ’ at all times.” She stressed that last part while speaking in Hoku’s direction, as he was the only one in the group who didn’t get her name right the first time, though he didn’t appear to react much. She then turned to leave and attend to other matters. As soon as she was out of the scene, the five mutants began their table chatting.

“You think she sounded kinda funny to you?” Mon said first, referring to Hone-san.

“Funny how?” Basho questioned in response. “I think she sounded elegant, like someone with a proper education.”

“That so, Basho? ‘Cause I couldn’t understand some of the big words she used,” Hiro refuted his younger purple-masked brother.

“I could sorta understand what words she was saying,” Hoku chimed in a little boastfully, “they just don’t sound like anything in Osaka I’ve ever heard.”

“That’s because Hone-san isn’t from Osaka,” Mokuhen interrupted his sons, taking a sip of tea. “She’s not even from Kansai.”

Hoku remained quiet after hearing his dad’s words, but then remarked, “Well, I guess that explains why she acts like a Tokyoite. You saw the looks she gave me?”

“She wouldn’t have given you those looks if you’d just gave a straight-up compliment instead,” Basho clarified, referring to his younger blue-masked brother’s calling of the restaurant as a ‘mishmash’.

“Now boys, you know it’s not in good taste to be talking about a lady behind her back,” Mokuhen cut the debate short, sliding the pile of menus around until there was one for each turtle. “Why don’t you try a bite of the stuff here?” As the turtles got to picking up their menus, the rat leaned over the table in an attempt to talk secretly, though he didn’t need to wait for the turtles to do the same – they were already listening. “If you ask me, you should try that combo special they got tonight. It’s got both _Jūmetako_ and _Hachimeika_ on one plate.” The turtles nodded and gave a ‘m-hm’ in response while their eyes were glued to the menus they were reading, evidently more curious at the look of the menus than what was written in them.

“So, _Ojin_ ,” Hoku sedged into a new train of thought, “you come here often?” He heard Mokuhen briefly answer with an ‘uh’-drone in his voice.

“You know what, actually?” Hiro interjected. “How do you know that Hone-san lady? The way she looked at you when talking about not messing around, it’s like that happened a lot between you and her. What’s the deal?”

Instead of answering, Mokuhen instead seized his teacup and gulped down the rest of his tea in a hurry before bolting to the sliding door and throwing it open. “Oh, look at that! I better head to the bathroom! You boys better decide what you want!” Without giving anyone time to blink, he then zoomed out and around the corner, ignoring the waiter standing next to the opening.

After the dust settled, the boys were left with the waiter standing in front of the open cubicle door with a notepad in hand, facing them. “ _Ette, go chūmon wa okimari dekka?_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> May I present to you, “Hone-san” (骨さん), Japan’s answer to Señor Hueso. Did you know she’s a ‘Hone-Onna’ (骨女), an actual Yōkai from Japanese mythology? I’m not quite sure if a living skeleton actually exists in Mexican or Euro-Spanish folklore, but knowing already that Japan has one, the setup was just too perfect to not use! She also counts as the first character I’ve decided to be a Standard Japanese speaker, mainly so that her honorific ‘-san’ (さん) makes sense, so expect her to not abide by the Kansai “-han” (はん) address. It also works since the meanings behind both her name and that of her original New York-counterpart are effectively, if not exactly, the same – not to mention having a ‘H’ and ‘S’ in their pronunciations. Her restaurant, “Yonotsune-Irori” (世の常囲炉裏), is likewise the counterpart to New York’s ‘Run of the Mill Pizza’, only it has more than one cultural dining aesthetic and serves a greater variety of foods, though it remains to be seen if pizza’s one of them.
> 
> Fun Facts:  
> Shinsekai (新世界) is a neighborhood in Osaka’s Naniwa ward, built in 1912. It was designed using New York City (Coney Island, in particular) and Paris as reference models. Today, it’s well known for its hybridized aesthetic of old and modern architecture, allowing for visitors to get a taste of the retro experience. It’s also one of Osaka’s most famous tourist areas, alongside others like Dōtonbori.  
> Kuromon Market (黒門市場) is a 600-meter long narrow and roofed shopping street in Osaka’s Chuo ward, existing as far back as Japan’s Edo Period. It holds stores and vendors that not only sell foodstuffs, but can also even cook that food on the spot for shoppers to sample.  
> Universal Studios Japan (ユニバーサル・スタジオ・ジャパン) is a Universal Studios-themed amusement park that opened in 2001, located next to the Aji River in Osaka’s Konohana ward, close to Osaka Bay.  
> A “hakama” (袴) is a pleated lower wear that works as pants. It’s usually worn under a kimono, and is mainly worn for formal occasions. There mainly exists two variants of the hakama: One, a divided/two-legged, trouser-like design called an “umanori” (馬乗り), which is affiliated with horse-riding. Two, an undivided skirt-like design called an “andon-bakama” (行灯袴), which affiliates with lanterns.  
> A “happi” (法被 or 半被) is a light outer jacket/coat. When they were first invented in Japan’s olden days, they were worn by house servants and bore the crest of whatever family those servants worked for, with the addition of being worn by firefighters as well. Today, they’re worn by people – members of a team, especially – who perform in festivals, such as dances accompanied with music and percussion.  
> An “obi” (帯) is a sash, as in a long ornate strip of cloth, that functions as a belt, first invented in Japan’s Heian Period. It comes in different sizes and lengths and can be tied a number of different ways despite its simplicity. Ones made for men are mainly used for its original purpose as a belt. Ones made for women are larger, greater in variety of decorative styles, and are worn for aesthetics (part of a kimono ensemble) alongside its basic utility.
> 
> Standard Japanese translations:  
> Ōi, shizukani (おおい、静かに): “Hey, be quiet!”  
> Yonotsune-Irori e yōkoso (世の常囲炉裏へようこそ): “Welcome to Yonotsune-Irori.”  
> Nē (ねえ): “Hey” (spoken gently and casually)  
> Karera no chūmon o kakunin suru tame ni ichidodake kokyaku ni tazuneru hitsuyō ga (彼らの注文を確認するために一度だけ顧客に尋ねる必要が): “You only have to ask the customer once to confirm their order.”  
> Karera no jikan o mudanishinai (彼らの時間を無駄にしない): “Don't waste their time.”  
> O kake-sa made genkidesu (おかけさまで元気です): “I’m fine, thank you.”  
> Onegai (お願い): “Please” (politely asking for permission)  
> Dōitashimashite (どういたしまして): “You’re welcome” (replying to words of gratitude)
> 
> Osaka-ben Translations:  
> Zettai chau (絶対ちゃう): “Absolutely not” | Standard: Zettai chigau (絶対違う)  
> Uchi no yayako kara te ~e o hanashite (うちのやぁこから手ぇを離して): “Get your hands off my baby!” | Standard: Watashi no akachan kara te o hanashite (私の赤ちゃんから手を離して)  
> Korenan'nan (これなんなん): “What’s this?” | Standard: Korehanandesuka (これは何ですか)  
> Andeddo ningen ya (アンデッド人間や): “Undead human!” | Standard: Andeddo ningen da (アンデッド人間だ)  
> Mokari makka (もかりまっか): a standard greeting in Osaka meant to ask “How are you?”, but taken literally, means “Are you profiting/making good money?” – in other words, “How’s business?” (It’s important to know that Osaka was Japan’s central trading hub in the past, which earned it the nickname “City of Merchants”)  
> Ōkini (おおきに): “Thank you” | Standard: Arigatō (ありがとう)  
> Ette, go chūmon wa okimari dekka (えって、ご注文はお決まりでっか): “Um, are you ready to order?” | Standard: Eto, go chūmon wa okimaridesu ka (えと、ご注文はお決まりですか)


	11. An RV to Yao City

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, everyone! Sorry for the wait. For the past several weeks, I was working on another writing project and once I was finished that, I had to take a while to get back into the groove here. To make up for it, I've made this chapter extra long for you. Enjoy!

“This landfill is the goldmine! The treasure trove of old and new delights!”

East of Osaka, kilometers from the official city limits in the **Kamio-cho** area of the prefecture’s **Yao City** , an expansive plot of land sat ripe with unusual items and articles, particularly ones that would be considered trash or treasure depending on who was visiting it. For a pair of turtles, this yard was most definitely filled with rare treasures.

Basho just tossed another dated gadget over his shoulder, thanks to the assistance of one of the mechanical arms extended from his battle-shell. Right behind him, his littlest brother Mon had to duck to avoid the object just thrown.

“Careful, Basho!” Mon exclaimed in a jumpy manner after his dodge. “Those things get delicate with age.”

But Basho didn't seem too concerned. In fact, he was currently too engrossed in the search he was conducting to wonder what exactly Mon was talking about. “Just another moment,” he did say to his youngest brother, “I'm absolutely sure this useful part is somewhere at the bottom of this pile.”

Basho sifted through the rusty dusty mess a little more, apparently not paying attention to the giant operated electromagnet right above him and Mon. It moved and whirred as it positioned itself above the junk pile the two turtles were currently next to. Basho didn't even notice the wide shadow being cast by it.

Mon, however, did notice. “ _Bro…?_ ” he quietly and nervously tried to alert Basho, but the purple-masked turtle was still arms-deep in the junk pile.

“Ah-ha! There you are!” Basho let out a cry of victorious delight as he pulled himself out of the pile, taking out an unusual mechanical part in his hand along the way. He turned over the part in both hands to give his own personal analysis. “Yes indeed, you’re exactly what I'm looking for,” he chuckled on satisfaction, but by then, the nearby industrial machine looming over top could wait no longer, and neither could Mon.

Without considering anything else, Mon dove at Basho, tackling him away from the new mass of junk falling down directly upon where the turtles used to stand. They both landed and skid in the dirt while they audibly heard the crash of junk next to them.

Mon recovered his bearings and was the first to express his take on that recent event. “Basho, what were you even looking for!?” he exclaimed with frantic leftover panic, “We almost got squished for it!”

“Well, in case you wanted to know all the things that were important to me at the moment, one of them involves me wishing you’d give me a heads-up,” Basho answered his little brother in the most relaxed, casual, and unenthusiastic tone he's had on record.

Mon would have snarked back with his own retort, but was interrupted by the unusual sight of something marvelous in the distance ahead of him, something that caught his eye.

“Oh me gosh,” he whispered in a shudder, “is that…?”

Basho was similarly in awe. “Yes, it is. That's none other than the absurdly modified armored-vehicle belonging to **Kunitsu Katsuro**! That armored vehicle’s been his main ride for not just his first, but all the way down to number sixteen of the ‘ _Shin Yomiko-Ryokō_ ’ movies as of right now!”

The armored vehicle's in question they were seeing and commenting on at the moment was in the middle of being towed by a truck of a dated design. After stopping at a spot in the whole lot, the driver forced his truck into a hard turn which resulted in the armored-vehicle tethered behind to come loose and get flung across the lot, rolling on the dirt until it stopped upright next to a random junk pile.

The two turtles flinched at the sight of the antiquated vehicle being treated that way.

“How could anyone toss such a priceless artifact of history in the dumps like this?” Mon asked in all his youthful purehearted confusion.

Basho shook his head. “I don't know, little brother, but we got to have it.”

Mon was in no mood to disagree with his brainy elder, so both got right to work in using their ninja skills, making long-ranged leaps and bounds from one junk pile to another, zigzagging closer and closer to the unattended armored-vehicle until they were within a meter of it.

“So how are we gonna get this thing outta here?” Mon asked for a plan once it was within their grasp. “Maybe we should ask the yard owner who brought it here.”

“Sure we ought to,” Basho replied to the suggestion like it was an afterthought, “but given the circumstances of what we’re after here, it would be just as unwise to tip that guy off to the actual value of this baby.”

“But it’d be even worse to just steal it,” Mon restated his hesitation insistently. “If the guy finds us taking something he worked hard to bring here, he’ll know it’d be totally unfair!”

“Well, it’d be even more unfair to just let it sit there wasting away like that when it's better suited in the hands of someone who cares for it,” Basho refuted, “If I were that guy, everything – including this thing –” he pointed at the armored-vehicle, “would just be junk. It isn't stealing if no one wants it.”

“Well, if no one wants it,” Mon retorted back, “why are we –”

Neither brother got any more time to argue this out when they were interrupted by the loud sounds of metal scraps being lifted above them nearby, prompting them to slowly look up at the source of the intrusion. Staring right down at them, with a rusted car held in both hands right above his head, a tall man leered menacingly. But what shocked the boys even more was that the man didn't look like a man, at least not like a human man, specifically.

Instead, he looked absolutely bug-like, with two long, curved, and started claws for arms, spindly legs, and an insectoid abdomen protruding out from the base of his spine. His eyes were big and neon-green, he had a pair of antennae on his brow, a full head of black hair on his scalp, and his entire body was a solid light purple – he basically came across as humanoid praying-mantis. When it came to clothes, he was wearing a pair of distressed jeans on his legs and a white sleeveless undershirt on his top, which in turn was overlaid with a dark bluish-purple jacket.

The guy growled. “ _Soko karazu ~u~ee~eenbuno meiwakuna sasayaki ga kite wa_. Who the heck are you goons?”

Basho and Mon were a little too distracted by the surprise to answer the guy’s question, instead reacting like how anyone would upon being confronted by a freak of nature.

“Waugh! Mutant!” Mon cried.

“Whoa! I was totally not expecting a non-human this far out of town!” Basho exclaimed a little more calmly at a lower volume.

Mon, after he finished expressing his moment of shock, got right to whispering again. “Dude, hide!” he said directly to the purple insect-man. “There's a human around here and I don't think he'll be happy to see you…and us!”

The mantis mutant didn't seem to be all that alarmed, on the other hand. “Relax, kid. Human trespassers aren't allowed here. But you're both pushing your luck here anyway.”

Mon stopped tensing his muscles as he paused in outright confusion. “Wait. But why are you here then?”

“I work here,” the guy said like it was the most repetitive thing he ever had to say in his life. “I own this yard in case you hadn't noticed the sign.” He raised one of his pincer-like claws to point it at the metal plate sign that hung on the metal fence post standing at the border of the lot. The sign appeared to have the text: **KAMA-Tori ~~tate~~ Salvage Yard** ( **カマ** 取り ~~立て~~ 廃品ヤード). Evidently, judging by the part of the printed text crossed out in favor of an extra set of handwritten katakana text of a different colored ink, the property had recently been renamed.

“Well, that's good to hear that we’re all safe here. Good to see another freak-like face on this side of the island,” Basho responded first in a positive manner, though it was more of a casual and relaxed everyday expression than of actual relief. Though his confidence was tested further with the insectoid’s growing impatience.

“What are you skulking around in my yard for in the first place?” he growled, “ _Kaigara o o tsukuri ni kaeru go-byō mae ni ya-ge!_ ”

Mon made his first second count to the highest degree. “Please!” he began, leaping back on his feet and right to the guy’s chest level, “You got to sell us that armored vehicle! _Ore-ra waya nata ni nan'yaseyakedo shiharaimasu wa_!” He, however, got pulled away by Basho before the conversation could go further. He was held in a huddle by his older brother who held his arm over his shell.

“ _Mon_ ,” Basho whispered, “ _you’re talking to a volatile personality. We cannot afford to tread light in any case!_ ” He lightly tapped a fingertip on the younger turtle’s scalp. “ _First, we negotiate, and we do it smooth._ ”

Mon appeared to understand what Basho was going for, so he followed his lead as they both slipped n their own pairs of sunglasses that they somehow procured and began marching in struts back to the mutant in a manner reminiscent of combat-trained agents in suits from American action movies. Both brothers showed off their own flashy styles to accompany their sunglasses – Basho rubbed a finger on the outer shell of the armored vehicle while Mon brushed a hand over one of the tire wheels’ hubcaps.

Basho got right next to the mantis guy and casually leaned on the armored-vehicle, his arms crossed. “So,” he began his diplomatic spiel, “how much would you charge to let us relieve you of this metal burden?”

The mantis mutant didn’t even turn around to face Basho. Instead, he occupied himself with a clipboard and a smaller extra spare part. “Off my property, _tainō_ ,” he answered in a gruff standoffish manner, “I got bigger ‘fenders to fry than you two.”

Basho was mutually unfazed. “Looks like you drive a hard bargain, sir. Maybe you’d be interested in a gift of divine metals?” With that, he drew out a thin wallet from his battle shell, opened it, and meticulously scooped out a handful of yen coins before sprinkling them like rain from his fingers to the ground. The coins dinged and clattered as they landed.

The mantis-man eyed the assorted but disappointingly meager number of coins Basho presented. He even couldn’t help letting out a stifled voiceless laugh through his nose, a faint lopsided grin accompanying it. But his eyes trailed back to looking at Basho in the face as he prepared to let him know his thoughts. “I’ll be honest, kid. You don’t have nearly enough for what I have in mind. But say, I could use an extra couple pairs of tough mutant hands like you two.” He then turned to face both Basho and Mon, not solely the former. “You ever done repo work?”

“Of course!” Mon jumped right in, though he then took an extra lengthy pause after he realized what he just said to the guy, lowering his sunglasses to expose his eyes. “Actually, no. What’s repo work?”

“It’s when you go shake down deadbeats for stuff they didn’t pay for,” the mantis-man answered, slicing the rearview mirror off another nearby rusted car he was leaning on for emphasis. “You do a job for me, and the armored-vehicle’s yours.”

That got Mon’s attention. “We’re in!” he stated with suppressed giddiness, getting uncomfortably close to the mantis-man’s face once again, which the guy visually expressed displeasure on his face with blunt obviousness. Fortunately for Mon, Basho pulled him away again, yanking so hard that the orange-masked turtle’s sunglasses flew right off.

“Mon, look. Repo men are supposed to be mean,” Basho told his brother at his most technical, “and I don’t know if you know this, you’re kinda the total opposite.”

“That really hurts my feelings,” Mon quietly protested, then realized what he said once again, “Oh…you have a point. But I can do this…hard as nails. Grr!” He then moved out of Basho’s huddle and turned to get the mantis-mutant’s attention again. “We’re in,” he restated more professionally. “Who’s the target?”

Without further ado, the mantis lifted up a clipboard containing a photocopied document with a printed picture. “I need you both to take back a _Suita_ -licensed RV from a real shady mutant who lives a little north of the prefecture. He lurks in the woods on the mountain parts somewhere near **Shijonawate**.”

Mon nodded as he took in that information. “You got it. One shady lazy mutant up in Shijonawate!” He and Basho turned to head out to do what they were expected in return for their desired reward. Though before they got far, the mantis-guy briefly interrupted them with one last message.

“One more thing for you two to remember when you get there: If he asks who you are to be bossing him around, tell him that ' **Kamatori** ' sent you.” And before either Mon or Basho could ask about that name, he beat them to it. “The guy’s me.”

Both turtles nodded in confirmation, resuming their leave without another word.

* * *

A few hours had passed, but after several attempts to find a random driver of a spacious motor vehicle, at least that of a pickup truck, they only managed to get as far as the urban areas just outside Osaka city’s official metropolitan area. Given that the ride they took stopped there as its destination, they had to find another, but there didn't seem to be any vehicles in sight going the direction they wanted.

“Well, we’re stuck and lost,” Mon started most obviously, reclining himself on the ledge of a maintenance shed's rooftop. “You think we can use your jetpack?”

“In normal circumstances, that would be ideal,” Basho handwaved in dismissal, “but given that my pack currently has only half the juice capacity of a regular car and we have no idea where in Shijonawate this guy is, that's gonna get us in way more trouble.”

Mon momentarily looked a teeny bit dismayed, but lightened up as he soon came up with a new idea to get himself and Basho moving forward again. He reached down and pulled out his mobile phone, rapidly dialing a number on the screen.

“Uh, Mon? Who are you calling?” Basho asked, sounding as though his pride was being hurt by the concept of asking for outside assistance.

“Just a friendly neighborhood connection in the city,” Mon answered jovially, yet most cryptically.

* * *

It was approaching sundown once Basho and Mon finally made it to the forest near the town of Shijonawate, stepping out of an early-2000’s Toyota once it had parked near a cluster of bushes and shrubs. A third person stepped out the driver’s side with the two turtles.

“Thanks, Uzuki!” Mon told the teenage human girl in all his light-heartedness.

“No problem,” Uzuki replied, closing the car door. “Let's just try to be quick and finish on time…whatever it is you’re out here to do.”

Basho couldn't agree more, though he took one last glance at the drab Toyota. “Say, Uzuki. It's great you got your learner's permit, but how'd you get your parents to lend you their car anyway?

“Huh?” Uzuki looked confused at the sound of such a question. “My parents aren't that old-fashioned. This car's just a rental.”

Neither Mon or Basho wanted to know how she was allowed that car for use upon hearing that revelation, considering she didn’t have an actual driver’s license. But now wasn’t the time to investigate that conundrum. They had an RV to repossess.

The three carefully snuck their way to a bunch of shrubs that lined the border of a clearing in the forest, keeping low to the ground the whole time. Peering over the top layer of leaves, they spied the RV dead ahead, sitting motionless with its windows colored with light from within, its side entrance door partially open.

 _“Okay, I read over his profile,”_ Basho whispered to Mon, though Uzuki was also listening in, _“he's a lawless loner, doesn't pay his bills, and lives out far into this spooky ancient forest.”_ He tensed as he reached his conclusion. _“This guy’s gotta fit the whole criteria for the Takagi-Nisemono rumor!”_

 _“You actually read that rumor website Hoku showed us again?”_ Mon asked in mild disbelief, expressing surprise at his science-oriented brother using such a site as a research source, let alone buy into that site’s questionable content.

Uzuki, on the other hand, was caught off guard by another factor. “Wait, hold up!” she tried to butt in. “What’s all this stuff about some criminal and rumors? What are you guys trying to do?” Hearing the brief explanation whispered into her ear by Mon only made her briefly crumple further onto the grass. “I really gotta ask first before doing any favors for you,” she groaned, holding her head in her hands.

The three inched closer and closer to the RV, even going past the shrubs they originally hid behind a few seconds ago, sneakily making their way to about a couple meters from what was the RV’s rear end just to hide behind a tree with another set of bushes. “So how are we gonna lay it on this guy?” Mon asked once they were close enough. “If we’re looking at someone just as tough and gritty as Kamatori-han, what if they’re a real bad camper? What if we’re looking at a _Wanyudo_ RV?”

“Oh, come on, Mon. Are we really going into Yokai-hypotheticals?” Basho complained in response. “Anyway, what happened to ‘‘hard-as-nails’-Mon’, huh?”

“Well guys, maybe it’s not too late,” Uzuki suggested, “we can still back out now…”

Mon, on the other hand, internally gave himself a hard reset by means of a mental slap on the cheeks. “I’m not scared of some forest-dwelling rumor! In fact, let’s get a look at him!” With that, he reached over and pushed a couple bushes apart for a better look. The partially open door of the RV slowly swung open, a shadow inching across the alit forest ground below. “Here he comes!” Mon harshly whispered.

The source of the shadow crept past the footage, exposing only the front snout of its own face. From what the three could make out, the snout was quite enlarged, a mammalian nose on the top tip, a patch of hair beneath said nose, and a mouth opened up to expose an upper set of elongated buckteeth. Even without the webs of saliva dripping between both jaws, the three already got a good enough impression, judging from how they all staggered backwards off their feet, going from crouching to sitting.

“That's the biggest forest dweller I've ever seen!” Mon gasped.

“Yeah, that totally tears it!” Uzuki hissed in mutual agreement. “Basho! You muscle in on that guy!”

“Okay, why are you looking at me?” Basho objected, pointing at his little brother. “Coming here was Mon’s idea!”

“Well, you’re the one with the bad guy-busting tech!” Uzuki reasoned just as intensely. “You got the sharpest edge out of all three of us!” She was accompanied by Mon’s ‘mhm’-ing and nodding of his head.

Not that it was enough to make Basho completely give up in agreement, but he took the compliment. “Well, yes. I suppose you have a point. But just to be safe, let me get Hiro and Hoku for reinforcements.” He started typing on his arm brace gadget, but was immediately interrupted by Mon.

“No! We can do this! Think of all the cool adventures we can have while riding in that armored mobile!” he begged. At the same time, Uzuki still couldn't believe that she let herself get wrapped up in Basho’s and Mon's predicament over an old military vehicle. 

Basho sighed heavily. “Alright, fine. Let's just finish this, but we'll have to use stealth mode. Rule number one of ninja-sneaking: Never let the baddie get behind you.”

A bright light shone on the three just as Basho finished speaking, prompting them to widen their eyes in sudden fright. That same moment gave way to the three springing away from the source of the flashlight beam, yelling as they fled in the direction of the RV.

“Forget the ‘hard as nails'-thing! I wanna keep my shell on!” Mon shrieked.

“He’s right behind us! Right behind us!” Basho hollered concurrently while trying to outrun his other two fellows.

“He’s gaining!” Uzuki shouted to both turtles as an immediate reminder.

The three kids tried to lose the pursuing mutant through the RV, going for the open door and hoping there was another door across from it. In the split-second that they forced their way into the RV and out again, they were assaulted by the brief sight of being surrounded by swarms of eyes, claws, and fangs. But getting away was more important at that moment, so they could only perceive shadows on the RV.

They unfortunately only made it a few meters out of the RV when they ended up tripping over a random pipe lying on the ground in front of their feet, sending them crashing down on their faces and even sliding a little. They threw themselves onto their backs to see the silhouetted mutant slowly approaching them.

Mon and Basho were a little too frozen to think of a way out of this situation. Uzuki, on the other hand, scrambled for some improvised way to fend off the approaching mutant, or at least send a convincing enough message. She rapidly swept her hand across the dirty ground for anything she could use. When she did grab something, she hoped in complete earnestness that she had a stick. She yanked her hand up to her face to see her weapon, but ended up disappointed upon seeing that she grabbed a handful of gravel instead.

Well, it was better than nothing. “B-back off, you big m-mutie!” Uzuki stammered, preparing to throw the tiny rocks she held if the guy got too close.

The big round mutant appeared to snarl, lifting a hand towards a part of the RV. Basho and Mon slid to either side of Uzuki, shuddering. The mutant grabbed onto a hanging string and pulled it, turning on an overhead light with a click, revealing the mutant to the three. The three were quite speechless at the sudden reveal of the mutant’s true appearance:

It appeared to be a short and rotund person in the shape of a tan-furred capybara. His head was literally the same size as the rest of his body, a pair of buckteeth sticking out from his upper lip. His scalp was covered in a cloud of curly auburn hair and was accompanied with an equally bushy moustache of the same color. He also appeared to be wearing a pale pink golf shirt and a pair of light-colored jeans that looked brand new, as though they were newly bought from a department store. But apart from his surprisingly nonthreatening appearance, the surprise compounded further when he spoke.

“Hi, friends! I’m Kiyoshi! Welcome to _Attakai-Hōyō Puppy Rescue_ , the ‘puppiest’ place on Earth!”

Everyone looked around the area that was surprisingly modified with fencing to accommodate the number of puppies running around inside and outside the RV. Said puppies ran everywhere, a good number of them flocking around the capybara-mutant and even some of them lingered around the three.

“So many puppies…” Uzuki shakily whispered, having a bit of difficulty in keeping a hand from reaching out to touch one of them.

Basho wasn’t entirely convinced. “Right,” he drawled in a suspicious manner, “and which one of these ‘puppies’ are you having for dinner?”

“Oh, that’s right!” the capybara-mutant, who identified as **Kiyoshi** , reacted as though he had been reminded of something important. “It’s dinner time!” Looking another angle, he reached over and yanked another hanging cord, triggering a loaded stream of doggie-kibble pellets to pour out a chute and into a long trough. The puppies yelped in delight as they all swarmed to both sides of the trough and clambered over the edges, sticking their small but adorably fuzzy faces into the kibble for some delicate rapid-fire bites.

There was nothing the three teens could do but observe the unexpected sight without a word.

* * *

A little while later, Basho, Mon, and Uzuki were sitting at a picnic table, still silent and with blankets draped over their shoulders. Kiyoshi the capybara was busy preparing something inside the RV.

“Any of you fellas wanna try my internet-famous honey-lemon-ginger-green tea?” he called as he finished up his work, then walking back out of the RV with a tray that held three tall porcelain cups containing the same steaming hot beverage. “I go around Osaka delivering them as orders for small restaurants and cafés. Then, I donate my earnings to immigrant workers in Tokyo who need the help.”

Kiyoshi set the tray down on the picnic table and removed the cups from it, sliding each one over to the three guests in front of him before taking a seat himself. At the same time, Mon was the first one to take the offered cup of tea and sample a sip of it, with Uzuki and Basho following his lead shortly after. None of them seemed particularly certain of what was happening to them right now.

“This actually does taste really good,” Mon quietly remarked.

“Yeah, it definitely feels like it's helping something,” Uzuki similarly concurred.

“This is a high-quality composition right there,” Basho doubled down on the former two’s positive reviews, but immediately shifted gears as he grabbed both Mon and Uzuki to pull them aside, remarking, “…and meeting time.” He only began talking again once everyone was a meter away from Kiyoshi and the picnic table.

_“Okay. Cute puppies, charity teas for immigrants…this guy’s no wooded prankster!”_

_“He's the nicest guy in Kansai,”_ Mon came to his conclusion.

Uzuki put a hand on Mon’s shoulder in solidarity. _“I'm starting to doubt you’re involved in real honest work here. We can't hurt this guy.”_

 _“But we need that RV,”_ Basho audibly pondered, then reasserting himself. _“We need to be tough on him! Hard as nails!”_ He stood back up and marched back to Kiyoshi, resuming his tough-guy façade. Mon followed closely behind him and mimicked his mannerisms, though he hurriedly finished gulping down all his tea beforehand. While both turtles retook their seats at the picnic table, Uzuki settled for standing closely at the side, holding her teacup as she observed what exactly the guys were trying to do – with a hand on her hip, the visible confusion never left her face.

For the two turtles, it was back down to business. “Alright, Kiyoshi- _han_!” Mon opened up as sternly as he considered himself to be at the moment while pointing at the vehicle behind the capybara. “We’re here to settle a moolah-issue regarding your RV!”

Kiyoshi the capybara giggled. “Sure thing.” He bent over to one side and came back up with a patchy-furred puppy in his hands. You fellas wanna hold Pai-Pai?”

Immediately, Mon felt a little nervous while Basho maintained his stone-face. “Oh, I really can't be –” But he was interrupted when Kiyoshi slid the small puppy he called Pai-Pai over to the young turtle’s hands. Mon tried hard to stay professional, but the way Pai-Pai insistently tried to clamber to his chest was already distracting him. “Aww, so cute and fuzzy,” he cooed at the puppy in his hands, but he immediately snapped back to reality, “… _choumatte_! We’re supposed to be talking about your RV!”

Uzuki tried to eke a seat for herself next to the two turtles, hoping she could find some way to aid her friends in this debatably questionable enterprise. “Hey man, your puppies are cute and all, but that's not what we’re here for. Can you, maybe…you know, pay attention to us for a bit?” she said earnestly, though hesitantly.

Basho wasn’t going to idle any longer before these unusual circumstances would significantly derail him. Pushing away another puppy offered to him, the purple-masked turtle spoke everyone's intentions. “Look, Kiyoshi- _han_. You haven't made a payment for the RV in two years. You understand what that means?”

The capybara appeared to nervously concede to what was told to him, fortunately showing understanding of his situation. “Yeah,” he sweated, “When you’re so busy rescuing puppies, your millions worth of yen goes into these little smiles. Oh, Mayu wants a belly rub!”

Basho forced the conversation to stay on track. “My hard-as-nails brother and associate are with me to –” he ended up being caught off guard by the sight of Uzuki and Mon up to their necks in puppies climbing over their bodies.

“So many! I can't protect them all!” Uzuki was nearly close to sounding like weeping, trying to catch puppy after puppy that fell from her while trying to get to her shoulders and face. Next to her, Mon was in the middle of giving names to each and every puppy within his line of sight as they climbed on him.

Basho already felt the stress piling on. “Guys, come on! Be serious about this –” He flinched from a bouncy ball smacking him on the side of his face. He felt even more irritated.

“Ooh, looks like Hanwan wants you to play fetch with him!” Kiyoshi remarked in a stifled giggle as both he and Basho noticed the puppy holding the bouncy ball in his mouth.

Basho was getting even more stressed. “No, I am not playing fetch with a puppy,” he loudly insisted, picking up the puppy called Hanwan to move him aside, “This is an official business m–”

*SQUELCH*

Basho gasped, his loud voice doing in his throat on exchange for a softer and meeker one. “It sounds and feels like I stepped in something squishy. Did I just step in something squishy?” His eyes trailed down to his feet to discover the predicted horror show.

Uzuki peeked over Basho’s shoulder to see what the turtle stepped on, and her reaction was all too similar. “ _On, iyana_!” she grimaced, clapping both her hands over her mouth. “Basho, I’m sure you forgot to add 'stinky’ to the list!”

Kiyoshi, on the other hand, didn't seem too taken aback by their reactions. “Oh, whoops. I guess with all the puppies to watch while they run around, I hadn't had time to clean up the yard.” He zipped in and out the RV to hold a bunch of shovels. “ _Anta-ra wa metcha subarashīya nen!_ You wanna gimme a hand?”

* * *

Many shovel scoops and a compost truck sendoff later, all the teenagers were using their shovels as canes to stay on their feet.

“Okay, why did we just do that?” Uzuki quietly groaned. “ _Mokkai naniya o yaru kotte ni nattotta noya ka?_ ”

“I really don't know anymore, Uzuki,” Basho let out a guttural sigh, “I really don't.”

“Guys, I think I know,” Mon somberly interjected. “It's the niceness. That's his mutant superpower.”

They were all interrupted by Kiyoshi stepping back out of his RV with another tray of teacups holding the same tea. “Thanks, you guys. You're lifesavers,” he said ever so warmly. “I'm sure you're all exhausted. Why don't you stay the night? I can give you the good old Kiyoshi-style _Ryokan_ treatment, give you complementary puppy bath and swaddles to go with the tea, do shamisen serenades and lullabies. Then in the morning, you can give Shani and Omu meditative massages.”

Basho looked charmed by what the capybara suggested. “Oh, that sounds so refreshing and fun and – No!” he cut himself off before he could digress any further. He had to get to the point now, before it was too late. “Kiyoshi- _han_ , _ki otte kurehen_!?” he demanded, throwing down his shovel, “We didn't come here to help you with all this! We're here to repo your RV!”

Silence hung in the forest air for a second. Kiyoshi said nothing, but then hung his head down while stepping back to sit on the front doorstep of the RV, the tray of tea not leaving his hands.

“I know. You're right,” Kiyoshi softly admitted, “I guess I stalled long enough and I…better stop and face it.” He looked back up just to show a face of utter despair and devastation, his eyes watering and his nose already running. “I guess we'll just…camp out under the stars tonight, and the night after that…” Basho, Mon, and Uzuki slowly began wondering if the sky was darkening with clouds above them.

Sure enough, the whole site was suddenly bombarded with rain. But it didn’t stop Kiyoshi from talking, “…and the next night over…even through hurricane season…” the puppies hid sadly under the RV, even already appearing drenched from the rainfall, “…and the next earthquake…and tsunami…” A puppy walked right up to Mon’s feet and dropped an umbrella in front of him, then feebly tried to untie the string with great difficulty.

Mon couldn’t take it anymore. “ _Okonai muri ya!_ ” he sobbed, falling onto his knees and laying his head and hands down on the dirty. He even grabbed the umbrella and opened it for the puppy that brought it to him, not minding that it had holes letting in the rain. Not once did he get up from his fallen position when he did those things.

Uzuki walked to Mon, taking off her jacket and putting it over the damaged umbrella. She turned back to face Basho with a near-broken look of her own. “Basho?” she quietly begged of the taller turtle. “Can we just…”

Basho finally crumpled, a fully irritated but defeated growl emanating from his throat as his arms hung from his dropped shoulders. “Fine! How about you give us the RV and in exchange, we’ll make you a new place for the puppies to live?” he suggested to Kiyoshi.

The capybara perked his head up, his characteristic cheery face having instantly returned at hearing Basho’s suggestion. “Really?” he gasped, “and you’ll make a new place to bathe them, and feed them, and a place to play to their hearts’ content?”

“…yes,” Basho hissed.

Kiyoshi was even more elated. “And you’ll –”

“Yes, I’ll also throw in robot assistants!” Basho barked before the capybara could ask more of him.

* * *

It was a new day, and a new puppy-filled chapter was about to begin. Keys were placed into the ignition and turned to start up the two vehicles.

In the RV, Basho was at the wheel while Kiyoshi was in the back, cuddling and tending to the puppies packed inside, though Basho had to simultaneously fend off any puppies that came for him while he drove. Ahead of the RV was the painfully-old Toyota rental car that Uzuki was driving, with Mon sitting in the passenger seat next to her – the car was also host to several more puppy passengers which Mon devoted to keeping entertained for the whole road trip. For both vehicles, a window was partially opened for some puppies to poke their heads out, ear-and-tongue-flappingly entertained with the wind blowing in their faces as the RV and rental car drove on.

It took a long while, but after traveling south from Shijonawate along the roads that went through the untouched forested parts of Osaka Prefecture, the whole group left the prefecture entirely and entered Nara Prefecture, coming to the foot of **Mt. Kongō** before stopping near the campgrounds of **Chihaya-Enchi Park**. When they arrived at a spot that they were sure was sufficiently isolated from the main human campground, the real work then began.

At the sound of Kiyoshi upwardly firing a fake pistol, Basho, Mon, and Uzuki raced towards a bunch of stacked timbre at the other end of the new plot of land, construction tools in hand (though in Basho’s case, multiple arms with gadgets from his tech-laden backpack). The work was long and meticulous, involving a whole variety of work: Basho used his gadgets to cut holes in some planks and lumber. Mon rode a batch of timbre with a few puppies as it was pulled up by a makeshift crane operated by Uzuki. Basho was putting some moving parts together along with installing metal frameworks alongside the wooden ones. Uzuki was busy giving a few built structures a presentable paint job. Mon set up a bunch of dog-themed decorations. All three of them took turns welding and fastening bolts. In between, both Mon and Uzuki took turns testing out new toys and entertainment contraptions built by Basho, with some of the puppies doing it alongside them too. Additionally, Kiyoshi was making more of his tea for them every other hour.

The work spanned a good number of suns and moons cycling across the sky, but after nonstop grueling work, the new home was complete: There was a sizeable traditional house that gave the puppies a place to sleep. A pool and waterslide were there to give the puppies a place to splash around in. An automatic frisbee launcher was in place to keep the puppies active. There was even an automated ride and a multicolored tunnel network. All around, the lot was adorned with colorful lights and aglow with the energy of happy little critters running and yapping.

The three kids’ work was done. After confirming that Kiyoshi and the puppies were indeed satisfied with the result, Basho and Mon were given the RV as promised. As the turtles started it up while Uzuki did the same with her rental car, Kiyoshi was next to them to see them off.

“Thanks, fellas. I’ll never forget you,” the capybara waved, though he made sure to get in several most parting words as everyone was preparing their engines. “Come back anytime,” he went on once he stopped in between the vehicles, making sure to get his words through either one’s front windows. Even when Uzuki, Mon, and Basho were looking visibly exhausted from both the work and Kiyoshi’s hyper-saccharine behavior, with Basho and Uzuki rolling up the windows of the vehicles they were operating, the capybara kept right on prattling, “If you ever wanna milk the puppies, they have eight nipples!”

That did it. “No! No! _Yamerotte_!” Basho belted out his opinion on the subject right before the window rolled up completely. Uzuki stepped on the gas and moved out ahead of Basho and Mon while Basho sped off right behind her. Though as soon as everyone was on the road again back to Yao City, everyone let out a sigh of relief.

It was finally done and over with. In the newly claimed RV, Basho and Mon couldn’t help but let out a whooping cheer as they reveled in their accomplished mission. “Hard-as-nails!” they shouted while giving each other a high-five.

* * *

Back in Yao City’s Kamio-cho area, Basho and Mon stopped the RV short of re-entering Kamatori’s scrapyard. It was only because Uzuki’s involvement with them was done and it was time for them to part ways.

“Thanks for the help, Uzuki!” Mon told her in gratitude. “You sure you don’t wanna get _soba_ with us after we’re done here?”

Uzuki just waved at them relaxedly while she stood outside her rental car. She patted a hand on the car’s roof as she spoke to her friends, “Maybe tomorrow, but I gotta return this rental soon, like really soon. I already had to schmooze with the owner over the phone for an hour just to keep it until now.”

Basho leaned out from the window of the RV’s driver seat. “Well, it was a schmoozing well spent. See you back in Osaka.”

“Don’t stay out too long,” Uzuki replied as she got back into her rental car and drove away.

Without anything else, Basho and Mon revved the RV and headed straight back into the scrapyard for real. To their convenience as they rolled in, Kamatori the mantis-mutant was in the middle of some work out on the open.

“Hey, Kama- _han_!” Mon called out to him from the RV’s passenger window, still feeling good about the accomplishment. “One RV delivered as promised! Wax up that Katsuro-mobile, good sir!”

Kamatori stood back upright to see the RV that was the subject of the task he had assigned to the turtles from a good while ago. “Hey, good job. Not bad there, kids,” he congratulated, “…but I better just tell ya’, something came up and I decided the AV ain’t for you anymore.”

Both turtles paused, silently at what they just heard. “ _What did he say?_ ” they gasped in their minds. Soon enough, Mon was all over him. “What!? Why?”

Kamatori pointed one of his claws at the armored-vehicle, which was now cordoned off with impromptu red-corded fencing, a decorated backdrop set up right behind it. “Well, as it turns out, there are dorky Kunitsu-Katsuro fans who’d pay yen by the bucketload just to sit in that thing!”

They couldn’t believe what they just heard that guy say to them. They travelled such long distances, put so much physical, mental, and verbal effort, went through all that trouble…just to be denied the valuable relic vehicle they were promised from the start. It was an outrage.

“Hey! _Nanishittenen_!” Basho was close to yelling, no longer able to contain his frustration any better than he tried and failed with Kiyoshi earlier. “We had a deal, man!”

Kamatori didn’t pay any heed to the turtle’s words as both Basho and Mon climbed out to confront him. “Hey, scrapping’s a tricky business, kid,” was all he reasoned, “and you just got tricked!”

Given how unbelievable small the mantis’s defense was, Basho wasn’t having any of it. He stomped over to Kamatori and got right in his face. “We are not leaving without our AV!” To his surprise, he was smacked in the head by the blunt side of one of the mantis’s claws, sending him falling backwards onto the dusty ground.

“Well now, the purple one’s funny!” Kamatori taunted.

“Told you I was funny,” Basho remarked to Mon behind him with a relaxedly confident pride.

But Kamatori wasn’t done with him at the moment. He swung both his claws and jammed their sharp tips into some nearby chunks of heavy scrap metal. “I’m gonna break your legs halfway through, and then do it again!” he threatened. With a heave of his claws and a leap in the air, he descended upon Basho to crush him with a double-bludgeon. But Basho was quick enough to jump out of the way just as the mantis smashed into the ground, leaving a dust-filled semi-crater.

When Basho was back on his feet, he was about to prep a counterattack, but his eyes noticed something else right above the mantis. “Mon!” he yelled to his brother, “The magnet!”

Mon drew out his Kusari-fundo to lash it in Kamatori’s direction. The mantis smirked as he dodged the chained ball that came his way, but little did he know, Mon was aiming for the lever on the control panel of the electromagnetic crane further ahead. As soon as the chain wrapped itself around the lever, Mon pulled it, cranking the lever to activate the electromagnet. Kamatori gasped when he felt the scrap metal pieces his claws were embedded in being pulled upward by the electromagnet, taking him up with them until he was stuck at the top.

With him out of the way, Mon and Basho instantly raced for the AV. “A deal’s a deal, buggo!” Mon tauntingly yelled up at Kamatori, who was too occupied with flailing his legs and yelling curses at the turtles down below.

Both turtles jumped the red fence and hopped right into the AV from the rear hatch, seating themselves in the two-chaired cockpit and hitting every button and switch they could find on the control panel. Sure enough, the AV whirred and roared to life, the two turtles laughing victoriously as they drove the vehicle to speed away out of the junkyard.

“Eat underworld-dust, insect!” Basho took his turn to loudly taunt Kamatori as they left. Little did they notice, Kamatori had dislodged himself from the electromagnet and sprinted over to his tow truck, revving it up to go after his stolen prize.

* * *

Closer to Osaka, the turtles riding their well-deserved AV found their satisfaction a little short-lived.

“Gee, this thing is slow,” Basho couldn’t help but complain. He looked through the narrow windshield to find surrounding cars and cyclists giving weird looks, even yelling at him and Mon for their obstruction of traffic.

“Well yeah,” Mon affirmed like Basho should have known that fact already. “It’s built to withstand the underworld’s corrupting soil.”

*WHAM*

Both turtles yelped in surprise as they were immediately jolted by a concussive force from behind the AV, forcing the vehicle’s rear up into the air temporarily. They both looked back to find that Kamatori was driving right behind them, having rammed them with his surprisingly fortified tow truck.

“ _GENKIN-SHA O KAESHITE NA!_ ” Kamatori roared from his tow truck’s driver seat.

The two turtles had to think fast, with Mon being the one to come up with a solution first. “ _Hiyajirushi_ , activate!” he exclaimed, pushing a button. Nothing happened.

“Uh…” was Basho’s remark.

“ _Dokidoki-yama_!” Mon tried another button. Nothing happened.

“Should that do anything?” Basho questioned.

Mon pressed a whole slew of other buttons in rapid succession. “ _Dokuwohaku_ gatling missiles!” All he got was a button coming loose from the paneling, sagging in the air while connected to an exposed spring. “Aw nuts!”

The turtles got another shakeup from Kamatori who gave the AV another fender bender before speeding up right beside it to give another ram, cackling all the while. He managed to hit the AV hard enough that it nearly flipped upside down. Kamatori got ready to land another hit on the AV with his tow truck, and he would have if it weren’t for a third vehicle ramming his back fender. Incensed, the mantis-mutant looked behind to see who it was, seeing before him an outdated early-2000’s Toyota.

“UUZUKIIIII OOONNIISSHHIIIIII!!!!!!”

“Basho, look!” Mon yelled to his brother and pointed out the AV’s windshield. Basho’s eye followed where Mon was pointing and saw that, sure enough, Uzuki was back, still driving in her rental car and using it try and knock Kamatori silly in any way she could with a car.

Basho shuddered quietly. “I don’t know how she found us or didn’t return that car yet, but boy am I glad to see her!” Turning the wheel, Basho tried to ram the AV into the mantis’s tow truck too, attempting to give Uzuki a hand.

Uzuki continued to stomp on the gas pedal as she banged the tow truck from behind, then speeding up right beside the truck to hit it at the side too. “Go smash some other scrap pile!” she hollered while operating the steering wheel, making sure she said so loud enough for the mantis to hear.

Kamatori was visibly battered from the amount of hits she was giving it, but after the latest ramming, he growled. Feeling maddened enough, he hit the brakes to slow his tow truck until he was right behind Uzuki and then revved it up again to smash the back bumper of her car. The sudden impact of the more powerful fender-bender made the rental car fly forward in the air, making Uzuki yell a bit. As soon as the rental car landed, Uzuki found Kamatori’s tow truck slamming its front wheels onto the rental car’s trunk, meaning that the mantis-mutant’s truck was now on top of her, gradually crushing more of the car with her in it.

“Ah! Hey!” she managed to exclaim before returning her attention onto trying to get away. “Not good! Not good!” she stammered.

Kamatori laughed as he watched the car underneath his tow truck slowly get crushed. It didn’t last long as he was interrupted by Basho ramming the AV into his side yet again. “Get off our friend!” Basho yelled angrily as he hit the other driver again and again.

Mon was just as worried for Uzuki as Basho was passionately defensive for her. He turned his eyes back to the AV’s control panel, practically scrambling both hands all over the remaining buttons and switches. “Come on!” he complained out loud. “There’s gotta be some kind of superweapon we can use on this guy!”

Basho took a moment to look at Mon when he heard what the other turtle said, despite being busy operating the vehicle to save Uzuki. “Mon, this is a movie set vehicle. There’s no reason for it to have advanced spirit-busting weaponry.”

Mon begged to differ. “Not unless this is the AV from Kunitsu-Katsuro’s fourth ‘ _Shin Yomiko-Ryoko_ ’ movie!” He perked up once he found what he was looking for, grabbing hold of the entire control panel to yank it off, revealing a different looking one underneath. “Aha! Just as I thought! It’s the fake dashboard-trick Kunitsu-Katsuro used to fool the _Yomotsu-Shikome_ that tried to take it over!” Mon navigated the new control panel for the buttons he needed to press, and pressed one once he found it.

“Hang on, Uzuki!” he proclaimed as a mechanical arm unfolded from the shell of the AV and extended over to grab the increasingly-crushed car that Uzuki was in, pulling it clear away from Kamatori’s tow truck and placing it on top of the AV itself.

Uzuki sat wide-eyed and motionless from inside the crushed rental car. As much as she wanted to ask how Basho and Mon got her out of that bind or what kind of vehicle they were driving, she decided she was better off being thankful she was still in one piece. “Uh, thanks guys!” she called to them below. “Cool trick!”

Mon smirked as he grabbed at a handle to pull it up, exposing a luminescent cylindrical piston. “On that note, I’m kicking in _Ōkaze_ -Turbo-Mode!” Once the piston had lit up bright and loudly, Mon slammed the piston back down into the panel. From the back of the AV, exhaust vents spewed out neon-pink streams of energy, propelling the AV forward much faster than the tow truck.

Kamatori snarled with irritable rage as he saw the turtles speed off ahead of him in the AV, even Mon making a taunting clown face at him through the windshield. Uzuki, on the other hand, simply held on to the steering wheel of her now-useless rental car, hoping to any divine powers above that it wouldn’t fly off the roof of the speeding AV. Neither vehicle seemed to care about anything at the moment as the chase continued, even when they both narrowly avoided a pedestrian who tried to cross the street with bags of groceries in their hands.

Despite the speed boost the AV had on its side, Kamatori was still keeping up in his tow truck at a surprisingly fast pace rivalling the aforementioned AV. Basho tried to steer the AV left and right with hopes he could disorient the pursuer, but the mantis driver remained on everyone’s tail. “I can’t shake him!” he audibly noted to Mon.

Mon was right on the case. “I’ll try the _Kuromizu-Michi_!” he said, pressing another button. Another opposing pair of vents opened up to release streams of oil that landed on the asphalt behind the AV. While it was enough to make the mantis-mutant’s tow truck slide and spin around with less control, it also had the unfortunate side effect of sprinkling oil all over several random passersby while going around a corner, garnering audible complaints that the turtles could still hear even when driving away just as rapidly.

Kamatori’s tow truck spun around while making circles until it managed to circle right in front of the AV, Kamatori using that moment to land in another hard hit. Then after circling back to its original position behind the AV, it went for another hard bump. That latest hit jostled all three kids the most. Uzuki was getting really shaken up from inside the crushed rental car that sat atop the AV, even noticing one of the doors fall right off along with the one next to the driver’s seat she sat on starting to come loose.

Hoping to get in one last improvised solution, Uzuki grabbed the broken door and held on tight, carefully waiting for the piece of metal to come right off its hinges. After timing the door’s complete release at the last second, she heaved and threw the door right at Kamatori’s direction, sending it smashing into the tow truck’s windshield that left a web of cracks.

“Score one for student-driver Onishi!” she pumped a fist while keeping balanced inside the car. But the tow truck brought in another hard ramming, so she got on all fours and tried to get close to the windshield of the AV cockpit that Basho and Mon were in. “Guys!” she yelled, hoping they would hear her from inside, “You mind hurrying up and getting rid of this dude with some other thingamajig?”

Mon finally found his voice again once the vehicle was properly stable again. “Maybe the _Ikadzuchi_ button will do it!”

“ _Ikadzuchi_?” Basho felt his stress levels climbing as he drove. “There is a button called _Ikadzuchi_!? Well, why didn’t you use that first!?”

“It didn’t say ‘ _Takemi_ ’ at the beginning!” Mon reasoned.

Irate, Basho unfolded a mechanical arm that held a red Sharpie marker from his battle shell and wrote ‘ _Takemi_ ’ in hiragana (たけみ) at the beginning of the ‘ _Ikadzuchi_ ’ label that identified the button, making it spell ‘ _Takemikazuchi_ ’. “There! Happy now?”

“Why, thank you,” was Mon’s modest and curt reply. With a single finger pushing the button, the top rear of the AV unfolded to summon a cannon that flickered with sparks of pale blue light, momentarily jostling the damaged rental car on top, and fired a ball of lightning bolts into the tow truck’s direction.

Kamatori stared at the projectile coming for him, his eyes widened and pupils dilated at the mesmerizing light. “Whoa,” he gasped in hypnotic wonder as any bug would for a nightlamp, “ _utsukushī aomigakatta_ …” And with that, the effect was instantaneous – upon colliding with its target, there was only an explosion of blue electric light billowing from an insignificant spot in Osaka’s urban skyline, with even a cry of pain from Kamatori to boot.

* * *

Back in the streets of Osaka city, the kids were cheering once again.

“Hard-as-nails!” Mon and Basho high-fived each other, elated that they finally had their prized AV in complete peace. Though they were interrupted by the sound of knocking on the windshield, prompting them to look out to find Uzuki staring inside at them upside down.

“Hey! You mind letting me in?” she called loudly from outside. Mon obliged by hitting a button that opened the rear shutter door of the AV. Both brothers waited until she was able to climb inside. Once she was on her own two feet inside the vehicle, the door was closed again.

“You okay there?” Basho asked while he drove.

Uzuki settled for a sigh of relief as she walked towards the two seated turtles. “I am now.” She took a moment to look around the interior of the vehicle. “So this is your ride? Is that what you were after in that junkyard that whole time?” She paused to think some more. “Is that why we did all that stuff with Kiyoshi-han?”

“You got that right!” Mon confirmed her suspicions without letting the smile on his face drop once.

Now it was Basho’s turn to talk. “What about you?” he asked, “I thought you were going back to return the rental car.”

Uzuki laughed nervously, slumping her shoulders. “Yeah. Well, I was on the way to do that, but then I noticed your whole chase scene from the next street over. I figured why not do my due diligence as a heroic citizen and stop the danger in its tracks…just had no idea it’d be you guys.”

“Aw, thanks a million,” Mon told her consolingly. “At least, you could still reconsider that raincheck for _soba_. Our treat, of course.”

“Yeah,” Uzuki agreed wholeheartedly, looking up at the ceiling to think about the wrecked rental that still sat on top the AV. “Mom and dad are so gonna pulverize me…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two new characters for the story: First is "Kamatori" (カマトリ), the repossessing mantis mutant who owns a salvage yard; his name combines ‘kamakiri’ (カマキリ-mantis) and ‘toritate’ (取り立て-collect/repossess). The second one is "Kiyoshi" (清 or 淳, meaning ‘pure’), the capybara mutant who loves to care for homeless puppies. The superhero character Basho and Mon talk about, "Kunitsu-Katsuro" (国つ 勝郎), is this version of Jupiter Jim. The title of his show, "Shin Yomiko-Ryokō" (新黄泉子旅行), means “New Journey of Yomi’s Child”. (Yomi -黄泉- is Japan’s ‘land of the dead’, similar to the Underworld of Greek mythology) 
> 
> This chapter also introduces more of Japan’s Kansai Region outside Osaka – Osaka is not just the name of the city, but also the prefecture (province) that surrounds it. There is:  
> Yao City (八尾市), which is home to the Kamio-cho area (上尾町) that is where Kamatori’s scrapyard is located; said scrapyard is based off an actual junkyard in that same area, called “Yao City Municipal Waste Final Disposal Site”. (八尾市 一般廃棄物最終処分場)  
> Suita (吹田市) is a city north of Osaka; there actually exists a rental service agency for RVs (recreational vehicles) in that city, called “Japan by Van”.  
> Shijonawate (四條畷市) is a town northeast of Osaka City, one of the urban areas bordering Osaka Prefecture.  
> Mt. Kongō (金剛山) is a mountain in Nara Prefecture, just neighboring the border of Osaka Prefecture.  
> Chihaya-Enchi Park is a national park located at the foot of Mt. Kongō that is host to both a family campground (金剛山キャンプ場) and a designated civic forest area (大阪府民の森 ちはや園地).
> 
> Translations:  
> Soko karazu ~u~ee~eenbuno meiwakuna sasayaki ga kite wa (そこからずぅぇえぇえんぶの迷惑なささやきが来てわ): “So that’s where all the pesky whispering’s coming from.” | Standard: Soko kara subete no meiwakuna sasayaki ga kite (そこからすべての迷惑なささやきが来て)  
> Kaigara o o tsukuri ni kaeru go-byō mae ni ya-ge (貝殻をおつくりに変える五秒前にやげ): “You got five seconds before I sashimi your shells!” | Standard: Kaigara o sashimi ni kaeru go-byō mae ni age (貝殻を刺身に変える五秒前にあげ)  
> Ore-ra waya nata ni nan'yaseyakedo shiharaimasu wa (おれらはやなたに何やせやけど支払いますわ): “We’ll pay you anything.” | Standard: Watashitachi wa anata ni nani demo shiharaimasu (私たちはあなたに何でも支払います)  
> On, iyana (おん、嫌な): “Oh, gross!” | Standard: Ā, iyana (ああ、嫌な)  
> Anta-ra wa metcha subarashīya nen (あんたらはめっちゃ素晴らしいやねん): “You guys are so wonderful” | Standard: Anata-tachi wa totemo subarashīdesu (あなた達はとても素晴らしいです)  
> Mokkai naniya o yaru kotte ni nattotta noya ka (もっかい何やをやるこってになっとったのやか): “What were we supposed to be doing again?” | Standard: Futatabi nani o suru koto ni natte ita nodesu ka (再び何をすることになっていたのですか)  
> Ki otte kurehen (聞おってくれへん): “Will you listen?” | Standard: Kiite kuremasen ka (聞いてくれませんか)  
> Okonai muri ya (行い無理や): “I can’t do it” | Standard: Okonai muri da (行い無理だ)  
> Yamerotte (やめろって): “Stop that!”  
> Genkin-sha o kaeshite na (現金車を返してな): “Give me back my cash-car”  
> Utsukushī aomigakatta (美しい青みがかった): “What a beautiful tint of blue”
> 
> Terms:  
> Tainō (滞納): delinquent  
> Takagi-Nisemono (高木偽物): “tall-tree imposter”  
> Wanyudo (輪入道): a Yokai appearing as a flaming oxcart wheel with a male human head in the center  
> Attakai-Hōyō (暖かい抱擁): “warm hugs”  
> Ryokan (旅館): a traditional Japanese inn built with scenic views and hot springs, though expensive to go to nowadays  
> Soba (そば or 蕎麦): Japanese-style noodles made from buckwheat  
> Hiyajirushi (火矢印): “fire arrow”  
> Dokidoki Yama (ドキドキ山): “pounding mountain”  
> Dokuwohaku (毒を吐く): “spitting venom”  
> Yomotsu-Shikome (黄泉醜女): “ugly woman of the Underworld”; residents of Yomi that appear as old hags easily distracted by food, known for being sent by the goddess Izanami to chase after her runaway husband Izanagi  
> Ōkaze (大風): “typhoon”  
> Kuromizu (黒水): “black water”  
> Michi (三千): “three-thousand”  
> Ikadzuchi (雷槌): “lightning hammer”  
> Takemikazuchi (建御雷 or 武甕槌): the god of thunder in Japanese mythology, also credited with competing in the first sumo wrestling match in Japan’s recorded history


	12. The Art of Nakazaki

At the side of a little quaint coat shop, standing next to its white-planked wall that faced another next-door locale, a figure stood in its shadow, unseen by the neighborhood's blissful and free-spirited residents. While hidden in the shadows, the figure was still rather large, so the darkness could only do so much to hide him. But nevertheless, he was confident that he had nothing to worry about. The people who lived in the city block he was in were more appreciative of the arts.

"This'll be easy-peasy," Hiro said to himself with quiet confidence as he matched out of the shadows. He was already a large turtle himself, but his size was slightly exacerbated by the hippo suit he wore. He sincerely felt confident that no one would find a hippo mascot walking around in **Nakazakicho** weird at all. This neighborhood was, after all, a haven for anyone (human anyway) who didn't fit the standard metropolitan mold. Hiro could only hope his hippo suit was as hip as the youthful hipsters who made their home here.

Hiro marched in the narrow street that divided the little shops and cafes, every one of them refitted from old maintained houses of the traditional island design that survived since World War 2. A lot of the front windows were decorated with songs and posters of different colors, and the spray-painted graffiti at on the walls of some of the houses were just as colorful. Now as for why Hiro was there specifically, he heard there was a new shop that opened in the neighborhood about a month ago, so he thought he'd check it out.

He was going around the corner of a random scented candle shop when he found himself in the line-of-sight of a group of teenage hipsters standing around in front of a spray-painted mural. They sounded like they were having a good time. From what he could see through the mask, it seemed that the group was praising one particular individual who was responsible for the piece.

"Nice job! How'd you put those colors together so well?" one of the hipsters enthusiastically asked the artist.

Another hipster seized the moment for a second round of lauding. "Yeah! That's a real eyecatcher right there! I sure wish I had your talent…"

From where he stood, Hiro was quite impressed with the work as well, both in the intricate attention to detail in the image and the way the multiple colors were blended together so well. He thought about taking notes to use as tips for Mon if he ever felt like redecorating the lair with his spray paint. He focused his attention on the hipster artist receiving praise: it was a teenage male, wearing a light cotton dress jacket that looked somewhat like a cardigan, a light scarf hanging around his neck, dress pants, casual sneakers, a pair of large square glasses, and a sporty cap on his head.

Hiro decided he should keep moving to avoid drawing unnecessary attention, though he couldn't take his eyes off the hipster's artwork for to it being that impressive. He hoped to silently give the artist his praise, but fate had other plans when he heard the sound of a decorative plant crashing to the ground at his feet. Hiro inwardly cursed his own lack of sufficient stealth practice – it was getting old.

The group of hipsters swiveled around to spot the hippo mascot standing just meters away from them, catching him in the middle of trying to sneak off to who-knows-where. Both parties stared for a second or two with wide eyes.

"Nice costume," one of the hipsters complimented, albeit with a bit of bewilderment.

Hiro was just as lost for words. "Uh, thanks?" he answered behind his hippo mask. He sedged a foot in the direction away from the group, not wanting to risk complicating things further by continuing a conversation. He would've kept right on walking if it wasn't for an extra comment made by another hipster in the group.

"I wonder if mascots are becoming a thing this year. The turtle breakdancers in Dotonbori were really impressive, but that was just one animal-themed thing. To think there'd be more like it…"

The hipster who created the mural painting made an effort to seem more grounded. "Well," he interjected warily, "How about we just go easy on the guy for a bit? It's probably a coincidence anyway unless a third animal mascot shows up." He turned to face Hiro. "You can go, man. Nice meeting you."

Hiro was relieved at this human's sensitivity, encouraging him to wave as he walked away.

* * *

Things didn't go the way Hiro hoped once he reached the candle shop.

Somehow, he didn't think through that the shop may or may not be built to accommodate his hippo costume's large size – getting through the door was only the first struggle. But once he got past that, here he was: a hippo in a candle shop. Even if he was careful about how he maneuvered his round costumed body, he still had to contend with the mask's extended snout that threatened to knock over the smallest of shelf products if he ever tried to take a closer look. He barely dinged a nearby scented candle jar on one of the nearby top shelves, prompting the cashier present to look at him like an accident waiting to happen. Hiro didn't want to cause any more problems by trying to be a regular shopper. He was only here to browse the new additions.

"Sir, I don't mean to interrupt," the cashier came around the corner of the counter, "but could you maybe take your mask off?"

Hiro froze as he realized the impending impossibility of fulfilling such a request. He fumbled around in his own head for some way he could get around this dilemma. "Uh, _kan'nin_ ," he answered in an attempted innocent-sounding voice while holding his hands up. "I'm kinda in a hurry for a party, so I'm just trying to find a good gift." He braced himself, hoping the other person would buy his story.

The store employee nodded, seemingly expressing understanding of the reason the shop had a customer who looked the way he did. "Well, okay sir. _Seyakedo, masuku o hazusukedo chibi tto mo jikan ga kakaran tte kakushin shi ten nen._ It's just for safety reasons."

Hiro got ready to insist once more, but decided against it. At the very least, he tried to make his way back to the store entrance before the human could get a chance to assert more drastic measures. "Well, okay. That's true," he conceded. "I think I actually wanna look for something else." His heel was right at the doorstep. " _O jikan o otta yaki ōkini_."

He got ready to turn around and leave, but jumped when he found himself face to face with an approaching customer. Both himself and the human in front of him let out a yelp of fright, and without Hiro realizing it, he ended up rapidly backing up into a neighboring shelf of candles. Even worse, he realized too late that he did so, only becoming aware the moment he felt his back thump against the shelf and heard the loud clattering of wares.

" _Shimoutta_ ," Hiro screamed internally, though his words came out as a whimper in reality. As predicted, a small glass jar containing a lavender candle fell right off the shelf and smashed on the floor with a tinkling shatter.

That alone did it for the store worker who had tried to reason with the hippo-disguised turtle. " _Shinjirarehen_!" came a flabbergasted huff accompanied with two balled fists on the hips, "I'm sorry for imposing, but I really need to ask you to take your mask off!" When Hiro remained too frozen by his fear to do so, the human matched right over to him with wide rapid strides. "Sir!" The worker didn't have to go far as the customer whom Hiro bumped into had mutual feelings for the matter.

"I'll handle this!" the customer huffed and swiftly clasped both hands on Hiro's hippo mask, ignoring Hiro's squeaky protests coupled with his own arms flailing in an attempt to prevent the other person from taking it off. But it was all in vain as Hiro could not grab and hold his mask down in time, resulting in the yanker pulling the hippo head off in elastic speed that effectively sent both falling onto the floor.

Both Hiro and the two present humans were staring at each other in silence, the humans appearing more stunned than Hiro was frozen in place. The big red-masked snapping turtle had his real head exposed to the two humans in the store with him, and he had no idea how to navigate around this pickle. He was hoping they would both assume him to be a person going for a nested costume approach. He still didn't want to say anything that would worsen his situation. Double or nothing…

"Uh," the store worker squeaked, "what…mountain are you from?"

Hiro felt his entire throat hitch, partially wondering in rapid speed about what kind of question he was just asked. He was too busy contemplating both his opinion and answer to notice the other human slowly raising up a phone, getting ready to record the spectacle.

"Hey bud! There you are!"

All three looked back to find the source of the voice that suddenly graced their ears, with Hiro seeing the same hipster artist from earlier standing over him at the front door of the store.

"I've been looking all over for you! You can't be going out on the streets in your costume and makeup like that! Come on, we're gonna miss rehearsal!"

Hiro had no idea why this guy was back and acting the way he was at the moment, but he wasn't going to say anything. Instead, he allowed the artsy human to grab him by the hand and pull him upright and away from the other two people in the store before things got worse.

Before they left, however, the guy made sure to hand some yen bills over to the store worker, apparently apologizing and paying for the candle that Hiro just knocked over by accident. "Sorry man, I'll take that candle."

The store worker looked uncomfortable, still thinking what the hipster was doing looked rather awkward. But without further hesitation to perform store service, the candle was placed inside a bag before being given to the hipster, glass cracks and all.

* * *

The hipster had pulled Hiro away from the little store and found a nice hidden spot behind another renovated house. The guy then clasped Hiro by both his arms, holding him in front while looking upward at the turtle's eyes.

"Bud, whoa!" he said to Hiro with restrained excitement, "Are you what I think you are? A walking talking turtle?" He wouldn't stop smiling gleefully the whole time. In fact, he leaned in closer to Hiro's face as though he tried to examine it, himself looking ever so curious.

That made Hiro arch an eye ridge, his expression of fearful nervousness changing to observant inquiry, coupled with confusion. "Wait. You're not freaked out by me?" he asked warily. "You know I'm not human, right?"

The hipster tilted his head and gave a relaxed half-smile like he heard the most boring but normal question in the world. "Yeah, I know," he answered with a shrug of his shoulders. "It's not like we're still living in the 9th century after all. Besides…" He turned back to notice the rest of his friends who were with him earlier approaching him from behind, as though they were catching up to him from a long run.

"There you are," one of them said once everyone was close enough. "We were wondering where you went." The group directed their attention to the unmasked Hiro next to their friend. "Is that the hippo guy from earlier? _Kare wa…chigatte mieru._ "

Hiro tensed again, anticipating that the other humans surrounding himself and the hipster would soon figure out the truth and freak out accordingly. But seeing their lack of negative response in the next several seconds served to confuse him even more. "Hey," he began hesitantly, "are you not okay with how I look?"

The hipster's friends looked at each other and the hipster himself before letting out a casual giggle. "Oh, that? It's nothing particularly earth-shattering." A motion of a hand pointed to the hipster who was right next to Hiro, the one who rescued him from his store predicament. "Roto here's had us hanging with him for months before we settled down with him as our new normal." As if on cue, the hipster street artist identified as **Roto** gave a little wave, as if to say 'This is me, nice to meet you'.

Now Hiro became even more confused. "New…normal?"

Roto's friends beckoned to him with a nod. "Is it safe for you to do the honors?"

"I think we're hidden well enough," Roto answered. Reaching into an inner pocket of his jacket, the human artist took out a small brooch and tapped it with a thumb like a button. To Hiro's amazement, a cyclone of light swirled around Roto's body, surrounding and enveloping him completely before dissipating just as quickly.

Hiro's eyes widened. Standing right in front of him, the human named Roto was no more, instead replaced with something that looked somewhat like a human but was pale-skinned, barefoot, blonde-haired, and was clothed in tropical vegetation.

"Whoa," Hiro gasped, pointing at Roto, "You're a…a…"

"Yup, that's right," Roto nodded. "I'm a Yokai."

Hiro's eyes remained wide, switching back and forth between looking at the Yokai and his surrounding human friends. "But…how…why…?"

Roto the Yokai shrugged his shoulders yet again, smiling rather apologetically while exchanging a side glance with the group of human youths next to him. "Well, you did hear that I hung around these guys for months. When we first met, they reacted pretty much the same way you are, only that time, it was louder and more kinetic – which made sense."

One of Roto's friends opted to add to his words. "When we first found out he wasn't human, we didn't just think it was freaky. It felt totally unreal."

Another friend chimed in. "But after Roto worked his butt off calming us down and explaining himself over the next week or two, we all kept in touch with him long enough to decide that life was much better knowing he was here."

A third friend capped off the explanation. "Thanks to him, it was 'goodbye, boring human life' and 'hello, magical slice-of-life' from that point on."

Roto couldn't help but awkwardly sweat a little at the subtly bombastic flare in his friend's words. "Well, it wasn't easy trying to make human friends anywhere in the world, let alone here. Like, imagine if I tried the same thing in Tokyo, or something…that'd go over well."

"Well, it wouldn't be too much of a shock there actually," Hiro gave his own input after hearing enough of the others' explanations, "considering where most of our fiction's big-names come from." But he immediately shook his head clear when he realized he digressed, refocusing on Roto. "But wow, that's cool that you're a Yokai! I thought I wouldn't find any out here in Osaka, just underground."

"So you know about Saikyōkai too?" Roto, along with his friends, worded in gentle bemusement. "Well, we're not that different from you and other humans. Even we know not to stay home all the time."

Hiro wished he could take off his hippo costume so he could properly shake hands with Roto, but given that it was too cumbersome and time-consuming to do, opted for a bow instead. "Well, it's really cool to meet you! I'm Hiro." The tails of his mask hung from his neck as he bent over.

"Likewise," Roto bowed back.

Once that pleasantry was over with, Hiro then got right back to curious-mode. "So, what kind of Yokai are you? What part of Japan are you from?"

Neither Roto or his friends answered Hiro immediately, but looked at each other with a somewhat lengthy silence before they let out a sputtered laugh. Once he finally got his bearings again, Roto told Hiro:

"Dude! I'm from Greece!"

That statement definitely made Hiro feel more than a little bit embarrassed, if his faint recoiling of a hand coupled with a tense smile was any indication.

As the conversation continued, Hiro got to learn that there was more to the Yokai than just the name. After all, not all Yokai, or whatever they are or called elsewhere, come from Japan.

Hiro was sure Roto would be in for a surprise once he revealed himself to him as a mutant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Nakazakicho" is a neighborhood in Osaka's Kita Ward, next to the subway station of the same name. It's surprisingly quiet and relatively secluded despite being surrounded by busy metropolitan areas, particularly neighboring the Umeda business district. It is one of the few parts of the original Osaka cityscape to survive being firebombed in World War 2, so it looks less modern and more traditional, giving an old-town flair evocative of past eras. 
> 
> While Nakazakicho is initially populated mostly by older folks, it's recently become a haven for artists and hipsters of the youth generation. Dozens of trendy cafes, vintage shops, plus other small independently owned businesses and even art galleries make their home in this neighborhood. A good number of buildings serve as canvases for any artist wanting to practice and show off their skills, shown in painted murals and sculptures around many corners. One could say that it's an indie's paradise.
> 
> Dialect Translations:  
> Kan'nin (かんにん): "Sorry" | Standard: Gomen (ごめん)  
> Seyakedo, masuku o hazusukedo chibi tto mo jikan ga kakaran tte kakushin shi ten nen (せやけど、マスクを外すけどちびっとも時間がかからんって確信してんねん): "But I'm sure it wouldn't take any time at all to just change from your mask." | Standard: Demo, masuku o hazusu no ni sukoshi mo jikan ga kakaranai to kakushin shite imasu (でも、マスクを外すのに少しも時間がかからないと確信しています)  
> O jikan o otta yaki ōkini (お時間をおったやきおおきに): "Thanks for your time." | Standard: O jikan o itadaki arigatō (お時間をいただきありがとう)  
> Shinjirarehen (信じられへん): "Unbelievable!" | Standard: Shinjirarenai (信じられない)  
> Kare wa chigatte mieru (彼は違って見える): "He looks different."


End file.
